


Shadow Puppets

by DemonQueen666



Series: Folkin' Around verse [4]
Category: Captain America (2011), The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Demons, Fear, Gen, Male Friendship, Psychological Trauma, Supernatural Elements, mention of Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-22
Updated: 2012-04-09
Packaged: 2017-11-02 08:32:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 25,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonQueen666/pseuds/DemonQueen666
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Captain America meets a troubled young boy, he ends up seeking help from an unlikely source, a former enemy. But will Loki's aid be enough to solve the mystery? And is Steve going in over his head by trusting him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Even though the film doesn't come out for another month, at this point I'm not even trying to adhere to its continuity, so this story is technically AU for 'The Avengers'.

Steve kept the shield at the ready half-raised in his arm, gloved fingers tight in the strap beneath it, breath coming heavy as he ran.

His footsteps made no sound where they hit against the alien terrain. All was an eerie void of silence, save for the huff of his breathing and the steady pounding of his heart in his ears. There was no hum of traffic, no call of wildlife, not a single noise to cut through the haze.

He didn’t try listening for the _thing_ that followed him.

Steve made a swift path back through what passed for forest, zigzagging around thin toothpick trees, his boots finding easy purchase on the flat dry ground. He made his way higher, trying to head towards the direction he first came. He tried not to disturb the underbrush, what little there was, in order to avoid slowing himself down.

Here and there was a rumble behind him, a crash, as what pursued wasn’t nearly so careful.

He broke the last cover of trees. A glance around to survey his surroundings revealed nothing: he was alone - at least for the moment.

To his left was the way he’d originally come, terrain he was now familiar with but knew to be hazardous and slow-going. To his right was what looked like swampland, potentially easier to travel but at present still unknown.

Steve paused, trying to think.

Behind him there suddenly came a loud, gurgling roar.

He quickly made a choice and dashed right.

There was a mud-filled ditch at the outright that he leapt over. A thicket of plants was brushed out of the way with an easy motion from his shield.

There was a break in the trees and nothing in front of him but a stretch of dark brown muck. He took advantage of the opening to look back over his shoulder.

No sign of what was after him, but he knew it had to be there. It had no place else to be except-

His thoughts skidded and then slammed to an abrupt halt as the ground gave way beneath him. His breath broke in a half-voiced yell, startled, as he sank down up to nearly his armpits.

_Wrong choice,_ he thought with grim, certain apprehension.

Steve tried to react quickly. He shrugged the shield up higher, onto his arm near his shoulder, and reached forward with both free hands trying to get purchase. But the dirt gave way beneath his fingers like clay.

He sucked in air slowly, carefully, knowing the worst thing he could do when faced with quicksand or a sinkhole was panic. But even though he was barely moving he could still feel himself sinking, the ground pulling him under bit by bit.

The earth was trembling; shaking, he realized, from the tread of the massive predator behind him as it approached its now trapped prey. Steve leaned forward, the side of his face pressed against the mud – the smell of it filled his nose and specks of it clung to his eyelashes as he stretched out one arm as far as it could go, fingers clawing desperately, futilely at ground they slid right through.

From somewhere overhead – nowhere and everywhere at once – came the sound of a mildly amused laugh.

Steve’s head jerked up, eyes searching even though he already expected to see nothing. In this, at least, he wasn’t disappointed.

_“Loki!”_ he yelled at the top of his lungs, a mixture of demand and plea.

For a long moment he waited for the response that did not come as his thoughts raced, confused and angry and intense. _What happened to my backup? What happened to covering me, if I needed it?_

Just when he was starting to think there’d be no answer at all, there came a low murmur at his ear, filled with detached mirth.

_“What’s the matter, Captain?”_ Loki’s voice asked. _“I thought you_ trusted _me.”_

The beast was close enough now that Steve could hear each individual step as it stalked toward him, the heave of its breath; that he’d no doubt see it clearly if he cared to turn around.

The mud was sucking at his skin, dragging him down hard enough he was trapped. He wasn’t escaping this on his own. His arms felt heavy from fighting and he could barely move his covered legs at all. The soil caked his pores where it still lay against his face on one side.

Steve closed his eyes for just a moment, as he tried to remember how he’d gotten himself into this, how this whole thing had even began.

*

It was a quiet day at the base - which translated into meaning no current missions, no ongoing global catastrophes which required the team’s assistance, no big experiments they were needed on standby for when they went potentially horrifically wrong.

A reprieve was always a nice thing, once in a while, and best taken advantage of while the getting was good. But Steve hadn’t felt like making any plans. He figured he would just relax around the base, maybe work out or do some sketching.

Besides when he was with his teammates, or other people he’d met through SHIELD, he didn’t really go out much.

His not-plans were interrupted however by a surprise message from Agent Coulson.

Steve still hadn’t quite got a handle on texting, or really just about anything to do with his ‘cell phone’, but he could read ones he received easy enough. Like every communication he’d ever gotten from Coulson it was brief and to the point.

_“Request meeting in 30 min. Lower level 4, corridor G. Will give details there.”_

Steve frowned, puzzled, but he went without giving it a second thought. That level was for the science teams; Bruce’s lab was a few hallways over. But corridor G…if memory served, that was living quarters. Little spaces usually no bigger than a hotel room, where employees could stay overnight.

He found Coulson waiting for him at the end of the corridor, in the middle of the hall with hands folded in front of him. The agent’s own version of standing at attention.

Steve nodded in greeting and resisted the urge to give a salute.

“Captain,” Coulson greeted in his calm monotone, “thank you for arriving so promptly.”

Steve nodded again. “You wanted to see me?”

“I should start by saying this isn’t exactly official business.” Coulson shifted to one side a little, gesturing for Steve to move closer so he could speak more quietly. “It’s more of a personal favor, on behalf of someone who’s been a longstanding employee of the Initiative.”

Steve took a surreptitious glance around. No one appeared to be actively eavesdropping but there was the usual foot traffic. Gossip could fly pretty fast around the base. He followed Coulson’s lead.

“I’m listening.”

Coulson gave a slight motion with his head. Steve tracked the movement with his eyes and realized he indicated a middle-aged man with black hair and glasses, standing in front of a closed door a few feet down.

He wore the standard white coat and plastic badge of a SHIELD scientist, and had his head ducked with fingers pressed over his mouth. He looked anxious, like he was restraining himself from pacing the floor.

“Dr. Mitchell has been with our division since before it was even made public,” Coulson explained. “He’s with R&D. Hardly a mover and a shaker, but he does good work. All in all a commendable employee.”

“And right now he’s in trouble,” Steve guessed.

“Not him,” Coulson corrected, softly. “His son, Gregory. Eight years old, an only child; the doctor and his wife brought him to us after they ran out of other options.”

Steve froze. “What’s wrong with him?” A frown formed, even as his stomach tightened. “Just what exactly is it that I’m supposed to do here?”

“I think it’d probably be best if I let the doctor explain it himself,” was Coulson’s response to both questions, subdued and precise.

There was a request in there – unspoken, nonspecific, but a definite request all the same. Not an order. And somewhere in the back of Steve’s mind, he was aware he could take a pass on this, and Coulson would accept that and possibly never so much as think twice of it. That most people might not even blame him for choosing to not get involved.

Except for him it wasn’t about making a choice. Where he stood there was one answer.

Steve had never signed up to be a hero, in the war or after, but once he found himself in the part he took it seriously. And he knew that didn’t only mean fighting the big battles. It meant doing whatever he could, no matter how small.

He cleared his throat. “Sure,” he told Coulson. “I’ll talk to him.”

Coulson nodded and stepped aside.

As Steve walked towards Dr. Mitchell the man raised his head, it looked like meeting Coulson’s eyes quickly past Steve’s shoulder. Whatever he saw must have reassured him; his gaze shifted rapidly to meet Steve’s.

“Dr. Mitchell.” Not sure what else to do, Steve offered his hand for a shake.

“Captain Rogers. I…thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me.” The scientist briefly gripped Steve’s hand in both of his, a distracted and nervous but heartfelt gesture.

“Agent Coulson tells me there’s something you’d like to have my help with, involving your son,” Steve gently prompted. “He said you’d be able to tell me more details.”

“Yes.” Dr. Mitchell took a moment to compose himself before he continued to speak. His words were purposeful and adamant as he built to something. “Greggy…he’s a good boy. Always has been. Likes to play with other kids, likes to go outside…I can’t say he’s _never_ gotten into a trouble, but he’s a little boy – no one would think to expect that. For the most part, he’s happy. Normal.” Dr. Mitchell’s expression turned stricken. “But the last month or so, something’s changed.”

Steve had been listening the whole time patiently, silent. “Go on.”

“He’s stopped eating. Stopped sleeping.” The scientist gave a hopeless shrug. “It’s like he’s done a complete one-eighty. He’s become so withdrawn. He hardly ever talks, and what little he does say…it never makes any sense to us. It’s like he’s pleading for help but we can’t understand from _what_. He cries all the time.” The man’s voice was becoming thick, strained like he was on the verge of tears himself. “A few weeks ago my wife noticed he was cutting himself – curling his fists so tight he was leaving marks with his fingernails.”

He stopped again to recompose himself. Steve didn’t do anything to hurry him.

“At first we hoped it was just some phase,” the father eventually managed, “but after that, we knew we needed to get some kind of help. We took him to see doctors, psychiatrists…”

The despairing expression on the man’s face made it clear it hadn’t done any good; that they were still without concrete answers.

“We were afraid someone might be… _hurting_ him,” Dr. Mitchell said in a painful, specific way. “But there were no physical signs. And Greggy’s been asked if anyone’s ever touched him.” He moved his hands in a helpless gesture. “The people we took him to were completely at a loss to explain what’s causing all this.”

Ducking his head again he fiddled with his glasses, the action seeming like it was a distraction. “I finally brought him here because I know SHIELD has access to resources unlike anywhere else. They drew some blood to screen for genetic abnormalities, and an expert in child psychology is coming to look at him later this afternoon.”

The inside of Steve’s mouth had gone dry. He moved his tongue around to get some moisture surreptitiously as he could before he started to speak.

“I’m very sorry to hear about all this, Dr. Mitchell,” he told him, “but I have to admit, I still don’t understand the part where I come in. What is it that you think _I_ can do to help?”

Dr. Mitchell gave a faint, subdued smile. “Ever since the team started showing up on TV regularly, my boy has always been a huge fan of the Avengers,” he explained with a note of brittle, silent laughter. It was the sound of a man who knew he was grasping at straws. “And Captain America is his favorite. He used to _beg_ me to take him into work with me, just so he could meet you.”

Steve nodded in understanding. There was a familiar feeling in his chest – both touched and overwhelmed, the same way whenever he was reminded just how much he could mean to some people.

“You’re thinking there’s a chance that he might open up to me more than he did with anybody else.”

“At the very least, seeing you might cheer him up a bit,” the doctor added. “He could use it. I can’t remember that last time I’ve seen him smile.” Then as if suddenly afraid to hear the answer, he started to backtrack, “I know – I’m sure you’ve got a very busy schedule, and much more important things to do. I just hoped-”

“No,” Steve cut him off. “Don’t worry about it. Right now, doctor, there’s nothing more I’d rather do.” He met the man’s gaze with the most reassuring smile he could offer under the circumstances. Nodding toward the door behind them he asked, “This is the room he’s staying in?”

“Yes,” Dr. Mitchell replied, looking overcome with gratitude.

“I’ll be back in five.” When the doctor started to protest, surprised, Steve stopped him with a self-effacing sort of grin.

“Hey. Even for a fan, it’s not _really_ meeting Captain America if he’s not in uniform, right?”

*

He had been to see sick kids before – cancer wards, disaster victims, children stuck in the hospital with no one to visit them for Christmas. Steve knew how to smile and talk to them in a way that’d be encouraging without seeming pitying. It was always nice to think he might’ve managed to cheer them up a little bit afterwards.

But you could get good at something without ever really getting _used_ to seeing it. Little boys and girls as hurt as, or worse off than, injured men he’d fought alongside back in the day was no exception.

Gregory Mitchell didn’t have any broken limbs or beeping monitors hooked up to him. He was wearing pajamas his parents must have brought in with him, green and gray with dinosaurs. His hair was black like his father’s, a few stubborn cowlicks sticking up here and there. He had the pale pasty complexion of someone who’d been sick for a very long time, with chapped lips and puffy bags under his eyes.

He sat huddled in the middle of his tiny hospital bed. There was a band-aid inside his elbow where his blood had been drawn: patterned with the stars and stripes of Captain America’s shield.

Steve smiled at him gently from beneath his cowl. “Hey there. You must be Gregory.”

The boy gazed up at him silently for a beat.

“Are you really Captain America?” he asked at last in a warble. “Not just some guy dressed up like him, like the one that came to my friend Billy’s birthday party.”

Steve had to repress a chuckle, incongruous as it was.

“Uh huh,” he assured him. “I’m the real deal.” He reached for a nearby chair. “It’s nice to meet you, Gregory – or would you like me to call you Greggy instead? Your dad tells me that’s what you want everyone to call you.”

Greggy sucked in a breath, never taking his eyes off him. “Yeah.”

“He said, you’ve been asking him if you could meet me for a pretty long time now,” Steve added with a faint grin.

“I have all the action figures they put out of you. Even the special really cool one you have to send in the tags from the other boxes to get in the mail. Which means I had to get two different Hawkeyes. But that’s okay, because I traded one of the kids on my bus for two Twinkies and a bag of marbles.” Even with the cloud hanging over him the kid brightened as he discussed clearly a favorite subject. “And, once in art class I painted a picture of the time you fought the Armadillo, and the teacher put it on the middle of the board and gave me an extra sticker.”

“Wow, that’s really neat. You know, art was probably my favorite subject, way back when I was in school,” Steve told him. “What about you, do you like art a lot?”

Greggy’s face closed off again, and he shrugged, turning self-conscious. “It’s okay. I don’t…really like school a whole lot anymore.”

“Why not?”

Another shrug. “Just ‘cause.”

When that non-answer trailed off into silence it seemed like it was time to get to the heart of the matter. Steve shifted in the chair, trying to get himself comfortable; the suit was made for running and fighting in, not sitting down.

“Hey, you know, your dad also told me that you haven’t been feeling well lately. That he thinks there’s something bothering you.” He leaned forward, hands folding together as he gazed at the boy earnestly. “It sounds like he and your mom are really worried about you.”

The boy didn’t say anything in response. He hunched further in on himself and sucked in an uneasy, frightened breath. His eyes didn’t meet Steve’s. They didn’t even look in his direction.

“Greggy,” Steve tried again, firm as he could without being intimidating. “You know if you have a problem, your mom and dad can’t help you if they don’t know what it is, right? And that’s all they really want to do. Figure out what’s wrong, so they can make it better.”

The boy mumbled something, but Steve couldn’t catch it. He leaned forward a little. “What was that?” he asked gently.

“They can’t help me,” Greggy repeated. He kept gazing in the same direction before dropping his eyes downward as he hugged his arms across his chest. “None of these people they take me to can, either. They can’t see _him_. How can they make him go away if they don’t even know he’s there?”

Steve’s attention was already on him, undivided, but somehow this strange statement made him focus on him even more. “Who’s there, Greggy? Who are you talking about? Who’s scaring you?”

The boy lifted his head, staring into Steve’s eyes piteously as tears started to well. “The bad teddy bear,” he cried.

Steve took a quick glance around the room. There were no teddy bears; there wasn’t even anything bear-patterned or bear-shaped. He looked back at the boy with a concerned frown.

“What teddy bear?” he pressed. “What do you mean?”

“He’s always _there_ ,” Greggy moaned. “He says mean things to me, and he won’t leave me alone. I can’t make him stop no matter what I do or say. It only gets worse when the lights go out. And if I fall asleep, he makes my dreams scary."

He looked up at his hero with begging and unhappiness written into every line of his small face. “Can you make him go away? Please? You stop bad things from happening all the time. So _you_ can get rid of him, right?”

Steve set the back of his teeth as he tried to keep his expression from showing too much, even under his mask. _I don’t think so. I don’t know. I’m not even sure what you’re talking about. I’m sorry._

_No._

But even completely at a loss, he wouldn’t – couldn’t – let that be the answer. Not here. Not with a little kid. Not with someone who needed, was outright pleading for his help.

“I’ll do what I can, Greggy.” Tentative, he reached out a hand, and then with more assurance rested it on the boy’s shoulder. Gave him an encouraging squeeze. “I’m going to try to help you. I promise.”

Greggy sniffled and nodded but didn’t smile back at him. And even as he was trying so hard to project confidence onto the kid, Steve felt absolutely none.

Instead all he could do was wonder what he was getting himself into.

*

Hours later Steve still hadn’t changed out of his costume. He leaned against the wall in the corridor down from Gregory Mitchell’s room, cowl pulled back, watching Dr. Mitchell and his wife as they waited outside to hear what the child psychologist had to say. Waiting himself for – he didn’t know what.

But then, the Mitchells probably didn’t either.

Mrs. Mitchell was a short woman with light hair in curls that were coming undone. She’d taken her coat off and kept it folded in her arms, wrinkling it where she clung to it tightly.

Some parents, Steve had seen, would turn on each other when their child was in trouble, blaming each other so they’d have something to pin their fear and frustration on. The Mitchells seemed to be going in the opposite direction. They clutched at each other, staring at one other’s faces as if terrified to be alone.

There was the sound of footsteps from behind him. Steve didn’t care to look up, but then he heard Tony’s voice.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“Hey Tony,” was Steve’s listless, automatic greeting. He never turned his head.

“I just got a new car. And, before you even say anything, here; let me show you a picture.” Tony moved so he was at Steve’s side, already raising one of his little electronic devices and tapping at the nonexistent buttons on its screen. “Believe me, you’ll understand why.”

“Show me later.”

“I’m serious, Steve, you gotta see this – sports car, of course, with a custom paint job and a convertible top. But what _really_ makes this baby, is the engine. You know, I might even let you borrow it sometime. I mean that.”

“Tony…” Steve squeezed his eyes closed for a moment. “That’s nice and all. But right now I’m just really not in the mood.”

Tony dropped his hand, the carefree smugness from his face, and also the act. “I heard about the kid,” he told Steve, more somberly.

“Okay,” Steve said tiredly, because that didn’t really surprise him, “so what, you appointed yourself to come down and try to cheer me up?”

“Hypothetically. That was my best case scenario. I would’ve settled for being a distraction,” Tony replied without hesitation. Steve let out a breath, shoulders dropping. After eyeing him sideways for a moment, Tony continued, “So let me ask you something. Is it just that this one asked for you personally, that you’re getting yourself so worked up about this?”

“That’s part of it,” Steve muttered, trying to find the right words. He paused. “Have they gotten you to do any of the safety talks yet; going around to the schools-?”

“Uh, no,” Tony cut him off adamantly, flat. He gave a strained chuckle. “Kids…really aren’t my thing.”

“Well I’ve done them,” Steve replied.

“Yeah. I can see _you_ doing that,” Tony remarked. “Warning all the elementary-schoolers to stay away from the hard stuff, and go to class; teaching them the importance of putting on proper safety gear before they decide to run with scissors-”

“To tell a parent or a trusted adult if someone is hurting them, or making them do things they don’t want to,” Steve interrupted.

Tony fell silent; after a beat, Steve continued. His eyes went to the floor. “I’m not saying _warning_ them about what’s out there is a bad thing, it’s just…when I was growing up, even when I was an adult, back – _before_ , we didn’t have to deal with this sort of thing.”

Tony cleared his throat. “People didn’t _talk_ about this sort of thing,” he corrected, specifically. “I’m not even going to get into the supreme irony of me trying to give you a history lesson, Steve, but if there’s one thing I do know it’s that the worst in mankind doesn’t need a boost to express itself. We never really learn how to do anything new; we just find the technology to do it better.”

When Steve still didn’t say anything, the other man nudged him in the arm, moving so he’d be more in his friend’s line of sight.

“Hey. When _I_ was a kid?” Tony indicated the direction of the room Gregory was in. “You started acting up in that exact same way, you stood as a good a chance getting labeled a troublemaker as somebody trying to figure out what the story was. Sure; it’s depressing as can be to know about it, but all that means is the information is more widespread. These aren’t _new_ problems, just ones that everyone’s learned to identify, so it’s easier to try getting help where it’s needed.”

“I guess,” Steve had to concede. It was still kind of hard to see things that way, though.

The door to the boy’s room opened, and the psychologist slipped out. Both the parents turned on him at once, all silent anxiety.

Steve held his distance and watched, and even Tony stayed quiet where he was still at his side, evidently as caught up in he was as observing the strange tableau.

“I’ll have one of the nurses give him a sedative tonight,” the man was saying. “I think a good night’s rest for him at this point could make a significant distance.”

The parents exchanged a worried glance, Dr. Mitchell holding to his wife by her arms. “Do you have any idea what the problem might be?” he asked beseechingly.

There was a moment of silence and Steve didn’t even realize that he was holding his breath, that he was on pins and needles, until the expert started speaking and he felt a hole form in his gut.

“I’m afraid, right now, I can’t tell you more outside of what you already know.”

Mrs. Mitchell suppressed a tiny sob, dropping her face into her hand. Dr. Mitchell rubbed her shoulder absently, glancing at her before back at the other man with a tight-lipped frown. “What exactly does that mean?”

The psychologist moved his hands as he spoke. “Well, for starters Gregory’s displaying a lot of the symptoms we’d expect to see in a victim of physical abuse. But when questioned about it he denies anything ever happened, and not in the way typical of a child frightened of their abuser. According to what I have in his file, there was never anyone you suspected?”

Both parents shook their heads as Mrs. Mitchell managed to choke out, “No.”

His manner was soft-spoken and concerned while still very frank. “The problem I’m having really is that I’m seeing too many different markers without enough concrete evidence. With no indications of assault or bullying, his behavior could be diagnosable as the beginning signs of paranoid schizophrenia, depression, or even a particularly extreme episode of bipolar disorder – but he’s at least a few years too young for when those conditions usually start to manifest.”

Mrs. Mitchell gave a numb sort of nod, while her husband asked, strained, “Is there anything you _can_ tell us?”

“I’m not giving up,” the doctor assured him. “I’d like to talk to your son again over the next few days. Spending more time with him will give me a more accurate idea of what’s going on. If possible I’d also like to speak with you and anyone who’s had repeated contact with him, to see if there’s anything else that might come up.”

“Anything you need,” Dr. Mitchell said.

“You told me before that you think Gregory’s condition has been going on for a few months. Do you think you could be more specific?”

The parents exchanged a glance, silently comparing notes. “It started at the beginning of August?” Mrs. Mitchell guessed. “Yes, it must have been, because that’s right after when Rumiko left.”

“A Japanese girl that stayed with us over the summer,” Dr. Mitchell explained for the psychologist’s benefit. “I went to college with her father – we’ve stayed in touch over the years. Rumiko was supposed to come to the States as an exchange student this fall, but it was cheaper for her to fly in early, so we agreed to put her up until her host family was available.”

“This was a teenage girl? Were there any problems while she was staying with you? Did she seem to have any difficulty dealing with Gregory?”

“Oh no, on the contrary,” Mrs. Mitchell said, “she was a big help to have around, Greggy adored her. When he first started acting up, I thought he was just upset she was gone.” Her face fell. “God, you don’t think Rumiko did anything, do you? She was always so good with…”

“We’re not jumping to any conclusions yet; just keeping all the bases covered,” the psychologist did his best to soothe her. “It sounds as if this girl had a lot of time alone with your son, though, so I’d like to talk to her anyway. See if there’s anything she might have noticed.”

“I can get you the contact information for where she’s staying now,” Dr. Mitchell told him, playing with his glasses as his voice grew stiff.

The psychologist nodded. He started asking more questions, carefully herding the couple away – no doubt to take them somewhere private, probably see if he couldn’t get them to sit down and try to relax.

Steve shut his eyes and pressed a hand to the side of his temple. He couldn’t begin to imagine what the Mitchells were going through, how he’d feel. He felt stressed out enough listening to what he already had.

“So I didn’t quite catch all of that,” Tony said quietly, breaking the silence, “but I’m guessing it wasn’t exactly good news.”

Steve belatedly remembered his sense of hearing was much better than most people’s. “No,” he confirmed. “It wasn’t.”

He didn’t say anything else. Tony shifted so that he was leaning against the wall a bit, his weight on his shoulders and upper back. With a calculating expression he took in Steve’s face.

“You promised this kid you were going to help him, didn’t you?” He sounded like he was actively trying not to be exasperated.

“I promised I would _try_.”

“Of course.” Tony’s eyes wandered away before meeting Steve’s again, open and intense. “What do you want me to tell you, Cap? You know you can’t win them all. Especially when it comes to things like this. Punching bad guys in the head is one thing, but this…it’s a little out of our jurisdiction.”

“It shouldn’t be,” was the only thing Steve could say in response to that, staring at the floor, frustrated.

He felt his fingers compulsively working into fists. There was a line of tension going all the way from his neck downwards, every muscle tightened.

Between the war, the life he’d lived ever since he got thawed out, sometimes it felt like the only problems he knew how to solve involved hitting things. And when he came up against anything else he was stopped short. Helpless. Like Tony said: it was out of his expertise.

That wasn’t the way he wanted things to be. He just didn’t know if there was any way around it.

Tony had maintained a companionable if somewhat awkward silence this entire time, but suddenly Steve heard him break it with a clearing of his throat, and a short terse sound.

“Speaking of guys we could stand to have an excuse to punch a few more times,” Tony muttered, ducking conspiratorially, before straightening and dropping his arms. “Here comes trouble.”

With a bemused frown Steve looked up.

Walking down the corridor from the opposite direction was Loki. Immediately Steve drew in a breath.

“What is he doing here?” Tony demanded in a low voice, never taking his eyes off the approaching figure.

“Visiting his brother,” Steve assumed. “Isn’t that why he always shows up?”

Even as he said the words out loud, they were a reminder to himself. As of several months ago Loki wasn’t the enemy anymore – or at least he wasn’t supposed to be. Steve wouldn’t make a move on him unless he acted first.

“Uh huh. Remind me again how is it a guy who literally tried to kill us so many times I stopped bothering to count, is allowed clearance to walk through here without a care in the world?”

“Family member. Thor vouched for him.” Steve’s expression was between mirthless smile and grimace. “The director knew it’d be a waste of time trying to keep him out, since he could probably teleport his way in anyway. Take your pick.”

Tony made a sound of concession that wasn’t without a fair amount of aggravation.

There wasn’t much other traffic in the hall. Loki had to see the both of them. But his expression was a detached, perfect blank of calm. Though he was looking in the right direction he never focused on Steve or Tony, but neither did he pointedly look away. Probably them being there was a coincidence; it didn’t seem likely Loki had come looking for them. He was acting as if they were invisible.

“I don’t care what Thor says,” Tony was saying. “I know his heart’s probably in the right place, family values and all - but I don’t think somebody like _that_ can turn over a new leaf. Do you?”

“Not my call to make,” Steve responded.

It wasn’t much of answer, he knew. But that was about the extent of thought he was willing to give to the whole situation. Thor swore that Loki had given up on sowing chaos and was trustworthy now. There was nothing SHIELD could really do to hold him, especially if his elder brother wouldn’t cooperate in the attempt.

And so far, there’d been no signs of Loki returning to his old ways. He stayed clear of Earth a lot, and when he was in the neighborhood there was never a peep out of him.

If it was all a con, to try and make everyone think he was behaving, then Loki was certainly playing the part.

Steve wasn’t gullible. He certainly didn’t trust Loki completely, not even close. But if the guy really wanted a second chance he was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. It was all anyone deserved.

“I know you’re going to say I’m a cynic but-” Tony began.

“You _are_ a cynic,” Steve interjected, factually. His eyes continued following Loki as he walked closer. He couldn’t even tell at this point if it was instinct or sheer curiosity.

“Not all of the time.”

Steve’s mouth twitched. But before he could listen to whatever Tony was about to say or formulate a response, he spotted something. Loki had stopped walking, staring intently at something instead of looking straight ahead.

He was standing directly in front of Greggy Mitchell’s room.

There was no one nearby to stop him as he went to the door and threw it open, disappearing within.

“Tony,” Steve said sharply, already tensing to move. The other man stopped talking but Steve didn’t have a chance to explain.

There was a muffled concussive burst from inside the room, a flash of green that Steve had come through experience to associate with Loki’s magic. They heard the boy cry out loud in fear.

Steve, Tony, and several orderlies and security personnel rushed towards the room.

There was a smell like ozone. One corner of the room’s floor was charred where the blast had landed. The boy was curled up in his bed, trembling, hands clutched over his head and sobbing.

Steve tried to get close, but there was already a nurse trying to calm the kid down. He was in such a state of panic there was probably nothing Steve could do.

Instead he whirled around, looking for the problem’s source. Tony reached to grab his arm but Steve shook him off.

Two members of the security team had herded Loki up against the wall, grabbing and pushing him as far back from his intended victim as they could. Loki’s expression was visibly annoyed but he made no effort to resist them.

“What did you do?” one of the men demanded, getting in Loki’s face. “What did you do to him?”

Steve was glad he asked. The question was on his lips but he was so tense he didn’t think he could get the words out.

“Nothing,” Loki answered, blunt but detached. He brushed off one sleeve, making a distasteful look as a guard went to put hands on him again and he pulled easily out of the way. “To him, nothing.”

His shoulders moved in what it took Steve a moment to realize was an understated _shrug_.

“Get him out of here,” Tony ordered.

Loki let himself be escorted outwards, giving the personnel a lofty look of disdain all the way. As soon as he was gone Tony turned his back on the door, apparently all too eager to put the Asgardian out of his mind.

“Are you okay?” he asked Steve, looking closely at him. “Hey. Steve, look at me. Are you okay?”

Steve breathed in and out in a forced, steadying manner. He looked back at the nurse still trying to calm the boy.

“No,” he answered honestly.

Gregory Mitchell was quiet now but Steve could tell by looking at him he was still crying.

*

Steve didn’t sleep well that night. He spent the better portion of several hours staring up at the ceiling with hands folded behind his head. He couldn’t get what had happened out of his mind, but there was one question he kept coming back to in particular.

_Why?_

“Who cares ‘why’?”

The next morning Clint watched him with heavy incredulousness, as Steve blundered his way through getting the computer he’d been supplied with by SHIELD set up to play video.

“This is Loki we’re talking about,” Clint continued with a scoff. “Who knows why he does anything? I wouldn’t be surprised if _he_ doesn’t know his own motivations.” He stood with back against Steve’s doorframe, crossing his arms as he got comfortable. “The guy’s the poster-child for criminal psychopathy. He’s seriously damaged goods. Not much of a surprise that something like this happened. It was bound to eventually, right?”

“Him going off on one of us, or deciding to go after his brother with an axe, is the kind of thing I could see happening eventually,” Steve responded without looking up. He thought he had the right program – now it was just a matter of getting it to load without crashing or accidentally wiping his hard-drive.

He wasn’t entirely sure what that _meant_ , but the guy they’d sent up from the tech department the last time had been incredibly unhappy about it.

“Going after some random target on a whim, that’s another story.”

“Isn’t the dude supposed to be the embodiment of chaos, or something like that?” Clint asked, unconvinced.

Steve shook his head. “It still doesn’t add up to me. Loki’s done a pretty bang-up job of staying in our good graces so far. He falls off the wagon, and instead of taking advantage of the situation to steal one of the weapons we’ve confiscated or mess with our security system…he wastes it trying to smoke some kid he’s never even had contact with before, right in front of me and Tony?”

The computer beeped in an encouraging way, and what looked like the right image was up on the screen. Steve sighed, and turned his head towards Clint over his shoulder.

“Loki might be crazy, but he’s also _smart_. And that sounds like one of the more bone-headed schemes I’ve ever heard.”

“I’ll give you that,” Clint admitted. He handed over a round silver disc – Steve held it with what he knew was overdone care, but he couldn’t help it. It seemed so fragile. “But you really think looking at the security feed is going to help any?”

“I just want to _see_ what happened,” Steve told him, inserting the disc gingerly, frowning. “No one even bothered asking Loki to explain himself before they told him to clear off. It’d be nice to have some answers.”

“Good luck with that,” Clint said, completely flat. “I gave up on concrete answers when it came to Loki after the first time we fought the guy.”

With a few taps on the keyboard – and a few hints from Clint – a black and white but very clear recording of the inside of Gregory Mitchell’s room started playing. There wasn’t much to see: the boy was sitting on his bed, in about the same place Steve had last seen him, not doing anything, and then the door opened and Loki came in and tossed a ball of magical fire around.

“Satisfied now?” Clint asked blandly. “Because, not that you care, but requisitioning that footage wasn’t exactly easy-”

“What is he looking at?” Steve muttered. He barely heard Clint. The entire time his eyes had been glued to the images on the screen.

“Say what?”

“Loki. Watch.” Steve rolled the recording back and started it over, pointing at the screen. “He comes in, he doesn’t even look at the bed…”

As he narrated, the recorded image of Loki re-entered the room and sure enough, his head didn’t even turn in Gregory’s direction. If Steve didn’t know better, he might’ve even said Loki didn’t know the boy was there.

“It looks like he’s just watching the corner,” Steve concluded. The Loki-image swiftly threw out an arm and a small contained explosion burst in one end of the room. “And that’s the spot he throws the fire in, immediately after.”

“So what?” Clint said, shrugging.

“So, what is he looking at?” Steve repeated. “There’s _nothing_ there. It’s an empty spot in the room.” He shook his head absently as he tried to think. “Did you get the recording from outside the room as well?”

“Yeah, it’s on the same disc under a different file name. If you bring up-” Clint cut himself off, leaning over Steve to type at the keyboard past him, impatient. “Here, I’ll just do it for you.”

“Uh, thanks,” Steve offered, trying not to sound too sheepish. And, he was certain, failing.

“Hey, it’s cool.” Clint moved back again with a perfectly peaceable expression on his face. “Look at it this way: as long as we’ve got Thor around, you’ll never be the most technologically-impaired member of the team.”

Steve gave him a disapproving look but couldn’t think of much to say in response. Shaking it off as good-naturedly as he could, he turned his attentions back to the security feed.

The camera outside of the room was somewhere overhead – and it still unsettled and amazed Steve a little, how many cameras modern tech could place in one area and how well it could conceal them. Of course, the base _was_ a classified government location, so maybe it wasn’t exactly surprising it was strung up just about every spare inch with extra security.

As he and Clint watched, the recording showed Loki start to walk past the door and then come to an abrupt halt, his head swinging to look at the still-closed door.

“It looks like something got his attention,” Clint observed in a murmur, starting to get drawn in by the puzzle too, albeit begrudgingly. “Did the kid make a noise, or something?”

“No. Me and Tony weren’t that far away – neither of us noticed anything. Go back to the tape inside.”

Steve wasn’t even trying to feign competence anymore. Clint obligingly clicked back over to the first recording. Again they watched as Loki burst into the room and – far as either of them could see – proceeded to use his magic to attack an empty corner.

“Well. I officially don’t get it,” Clint said, shifting back again. “You’re right in that it doesn’t look like he’s going after the kid, but I couldn’t begin to tell you what he _is_ doing.”

Steve didn’t respond. Instead he put his face closer to the screen, eyes narrowing, as he played back the footage once more.

“What?” Clint demanded. “Do you see something?”

“No,” Steve murmured, “but I think I might be in the minority.”

Wordlessly he pressed the tip of one finger to the computer screen, where now he had the image paused. He traced the path where it looked like the frightened boy was staring before Loki had come in the room.

It went straight to the same seemingly empty corner the sorcerer had cast his flames at.

“Clint, let me ask you,” Steve mused out loud, “if you were stuck in a room with something that had you absolutely terrified, where would you sit?”

“Uhh, I dunno. About as far away from it as I could possibly get?” Clint guessed.

Steve traced the same line again. The boy was sitting in the middle of his bed - which was in the exact opposite corner of the room as where the fire had started.

“Exactly,” Steve concluded.

*

After the incident yesterday, most people would’ve taken the hint and gotten as far away from the base as they possibly could.

It didn’t surprise Steve all that much when after a little bit of poking around he found Loki sitting alone in the cafeteria.

There was a book he was holding in front of him half-upright with one hand, the bottom of its spine carefully balanced on the table. The cover looked ancient, leather-bound, covered with faded archaic symbols that by design seemed inherently sinister.  To his left was an untouched lunch tray filled with red and green gelatin cubes, and with his free hand Loki made a lazy gesture, causing them to float a few inches in the air and swirl in a circle.

As Steve approached he didn’t look up from his reading. It was only after the other sat down across from him that he lifted his eyes, taking him in with a cool expression.

“Well now, what’s this,” Loki commented. “Have you come to join the long list of people who’ve told me off for my insolent behavior yesterday?”

“Actually, no.” Steve placed his hands in front of him, fingers laced, and squared his shoulders. He met Loki’s eyes evenly. “You see, the thing is, I don’t think you were trying to hurt the kid. In fact, I think you might’ve been trying to help him.”

Loki’s eyes seemed to flash, though with righteousness, mirth or something else altogether there was no telling. In any case Steve had successfully gotten his full attention. The gelation plopped back down and Loki closed his book, resting both hands atop the cover, long fingers spread flat.

“Really?”

“Yes, really,” Steve insisted, not balking in the face of Loki’s seeming indifference. “I think there was something in that room that only you and that little boy could see. Whatever you did yesterday didn’t really have anything to do with Greggy, did it? You were trying to scare the thing off.”

The corner of Loki’s mouth turned slowly in a wry smirk.

“Every single other one of your cohorts seems convinced that I just, oh, how did they put it? ‘Went psycho’ on the child.”

“Yeah, well. Did you even try explaining yourself?” Steve guessed, unsympathetic. “Or did you just stay quiet and let everyone form their own conclusions without letting them know your side of the story?”

Loki’s smirk disappeared, tightening into a frown. “No one was interested in _my_ side of the story. No one ever is. If I’m to remain cast in the role of villain then so be it. I care not what your people think of me.”

“It’s one thing to be scapegoated, but don’t you think you’re kind of bringing it on yourself if you don’t even try and deny it when you get blamed?” Steve demanded.  He scoffed lightly, continuing, “I’m not going to say that people around here aren’t going to be suspicious of you for a long time. But you’re not gonna win any pity if you don’t even try to help your case.”

Somehow, without moving a muscle, Loki’s posture had turned rigid, his face angry and dark. “I am not interested in _pity_ ,” he said, hollow.

“Fine.” Steve straightened in his seat, doing his best to hide how much Loki’s glower had shaken him. “You don’t want to be liked – that’s your call. But I think you know something, about what’s going on with that kid. And I want to know what you know.”

When Loki didn’t say anything, only stared at him passively, Steve spelled it out further: “I need your help.”

“Really?” Loki drawled, an air of detached mirth coming into his voice. “Now that’s different. The champions coming to me for advice.” He paused, minutely. “What’s in it for me?”

“Come on. There was nothing in it for you yesterday, far as I could tell,” Steve said tersely in return. He leaned in a bit, his voice lowering as he looked Loki dead in the eyes.

“You put on a good show of being a sociopath, but I’m not buying it,” he told him. “I’ve seen the real thing in action too many times. I know what that looks like. You’re no bleeding heart – but there’s empathy in there, somewhere.”

When Loki declined to respond, simply continuing to give him the same empty, cold stare, Steve showed his hand and went for the honest entreaty.

“Look, I _promised_ this kid that I would do whatever I could to try and help him. No one else can even begin to tell what’s going on. You might be the only shot I’ve got at figuring this out, at being able to save him before he winds up in a rubber room somewhere. I _know_ that you know something. That so far, you’re the only person who’s come anywhere close to understanding any of this.” Steve paused, taking a breath before he finished, urgently, “Now I’m asking you to tell me, please; what’s going on with him?”

The entire time Steve had been speaking Loki had watched him unblinkingly, with no sign of emotion on his face to show whether or not Steve had been getting through.

Finally, as the other wound down, he turned thoughtful.

“That’s the thing,” Loki remarked. “I’m not entirely sure.”

“There was something in that room with him, wasn’t there? Something that you could see that was somehow invisible to the rest of us,” Steve pressed. “What was it?”

“There’s not one name for it that you would recognize,” Loki informed him, dismissive. “It’s a being from another dimension.”

Steve stared at him, riveted.

“Their natural state is something beyond the physical, composed out of pure energy,” Loki continued. “Your ancestors would have called them demons or evil spirits. They feed on negative emotions, in particular fear. They can’t be seen by any eyes but those of their victims.”

“Or somebody that’s in-tuned to magic, like you are,” Steve added.

“Yes.” Loki gave him a faintly amused smile. “Compared to the reaction I usually get from most mortals, you’re awfully accepting of a magical explanation.”

Steve shrugged quickly. “I pretty much lost the basis for questioning things the day I saw Johann Schmitt get scattered into little pieces across the universe,” he observed, laconic. “So, you’re sure what you just described to me - that’s what this thing is?”

“I’ve never actually seen one in person before. They’re as rare to find on my home realm as they are on yours. But I’m completely certain.”

“But what’s it doing here? I mean, why has it attached itself to this kid?”

“That’s the part I don’t understand.” Loki leaned back, pensive. He spoke in little more than a murmur, contemplating aloud. “These creatures cannot get into this dimension on their own. There’d have to be a rift between worlds, a small tear betwixt realities through which they could enter. It can happen, but it’s rare, and if it was recent I would’ve sensed it.” His eyes rose again to meet Steve’s. “The only other possibility is that it was summoned.”

“Summoned?” Steve felt his nerves unsettle as he compulsively pictured every scene of dark mass rituals to call up the Devil that pop culture had ever thrown at him. “Gregory Mitchell is _eight_ , you don’t think he could have-”

“He wouldn’t have had to do it himself,” Loki cut off his indignation with a dismissive wave of his hand. “But even if the creature using him as its focal point happened by accident, I would still expect that the boy had to be nearby when it occurred.”

“The Mitchell family didn’t strike me as big into summoning evil spirits. Especially ones that could accidentally latch themselves onto their kid.”

“Appearances can be deceiving.”

When Steve gazed at him incredulously for a full fifteen seconds, Loki relented with, “No matter _who_ initiated the ritual, odds are that the boy saw or heard something as it happened. Even if he doesn’t know or understand what it was.”

“You’re saying we need to ask him about it?” Steve tried, concerned. “Is that completely necessary? If you already know what this thing is-”

“It has bound itself to the child’s soul,” Loki declared. “I drove it away temporarily with my assault, but it will be back. It has its mark on him. He serves as its tether to this world.”

He folded his hands, chin resting on the back of his fingers, lids hooded as he gazed at Steve with all the prophetic blankness of a crystal ball in his deep, inhuman green eyes.

“Even now without being present it has its claws in him, feeding on his anxiety and unhappiness. It dominates his dreams at night. So long as it exists, it’s only purpose is to make him scream. His torment is its sustenance. And the only way to free him of it is to find and unravel that threads that bind them together.”

Steve needed a moment to shake off the chills that sudden burst of grim hyperbole had inflicted.

“So, does this mean you’ll help?” he finally asked Loki, once he’d re-gathered his wits.

Loki gave another amused smile, thin though it was.

“I must admit I’m curious. And as you so stubbornly pointed out, doing what I can in this instance costs me nothing.” He nodded, expression growing roguish. “My aid is yours for the taking, Captain, if you’ll have it – that is, if you trust me.”

“Thor and your other friends say you’re not a menace anymore,” Steve replied without hesitation. “So long as you haven’t done anything to prove otherwise, I see no reason not to give you the benefit of the doubt.” He started to get up from the table. “Oh, one thing though."

“Yes?” Loki tilted his head to watch him, making no move yet to rise himself.

“It’s Steve,” he told Loki, earnestly. “Not Captain America. Not Captain Rogers, or anything else. If you and I are gonna be working together on this, just call me Steve.”

Loki’s expression was unreadable as he took the other in for a moment, scrutinizing.

“Alright,” he finally conceded.

Steve stretched out his arm, hand offered for a shake. He wasn’t particularly surprised when Loki stared at his open palm at first before reaching past it to grasp forearms in a warrior’s salute. Understanding the gesture, Steve returned it.

He couldn’t tell whether he had a good feeling about this. But he settled for not having a bad one.

* 

He tried not to feel guilty about essentially sneaking back into the kid’s room. But after what already happened, Steve doubted anyone would be very up for putting the allegedly reformed supervillain and the already unhappy child he’d traumatized together again. He wasn’t sure he could explain their reasoning for needing to talk to Gregory – and, unfortunately, he didn’t know if he count on Loki to back him up, considering how _uninvested_ he evidently was in whether people assumed the worse about him.

So instead, they waited until the psychologist had finished talking with Gregory, and his parents left again. A few minutes went by. Steve hung just around the corner, watching the hallway.

When the coast looked clear he gave Loki a quick nod, and walked briskly across over to just outside the door. Loki mirrored his movements swiftly and with ease.

If he found something funny about him and Steve collaborating, he kept it to himself.

“Let me do the talking to start off. Okay?” Steve offered quietly, one hand on the doorknob.

Loki gazed at him with a completely blank look, neither argumentative nor understanding. “Of course.”

Steve was getting the sense there wasn’t going to be a lot of encouragement from the unlikely partner he had on this particular mission.

He left the door open for Loki, who slipped in behind him. “Greggy? It’s me again. Are you awake?”

The boy was tucked into his bed, covers drawn up over his knees, but he was indeed still awake as he stared at them both with eyes wide open.

The good news was he seemed to recognize Captain America even out of his costume. The bad news was that it looked like he recognized Loki, too.

“What’s he doing here?” His voice trembled with uncertainty.

Steve stretched out a hand towards him in a gesture for him to remain calm. “It’s okay, Greggy. You don’t have anything to worry about, I promise. Now I know Loki might have scared you yesterday, but he didn’t mean to.”

To Loki’s credit, he said nothing to refute this. Though Steve didn’t dare glance to see what his expression might be.

“I brought him here with me today because I think there might be something he can do to help.”

“But he’s a _bad guy_ ,” Gregory said disbelievingly. He put the kind of gravity into the phrase that only a child could. “He’s right between the Red Skull and Dr. Doom on the back of the Avenger-Os cereal box.”

Loki made a small sound in the back of his throat, that Steve tentatively translated as somewhere between ‘well doesn’t that figure’ and ‘insulted’.

“Look, I’ve got nothing to do with the merchandising,” Steve felt obligated to say to him, defensively, in an aside.

Loki’s only response was a brief withering glance.

Steve turned back to Gregory. “He used to be,” he explained very seriously. “But he’s not a bad guy anymore. He…got better. Now he’s one of my friends.”

He could actually _feel_ Loki’s eyeballs slide sideways to gaze at him, on that one. Steve ignored it.

The boy took that in for a beat and slowly nodded his head, still wary, but clearly willing to accept his favorite superhero’s word.

“Okay.”

Steve tried to keep his relief concealed. There was work here to be done. “If it’s all right with you, we’d like to ask a few things. Do you think you’re up for that?”

Gregory shifted in on himself again, arms curling. “All the other grown-ups keep asking me stuff. None of it helps.”

Steve opened his mouth to respond, but Loki beat him to it.

“That’s because they don’t know what to ask.”

Steve stared at him with nervous apprehension, uncertain whether to try and cut him off. But while he waffled, Loki kept going.

“They think that your monster is nothing more than a figment. A delusion, imaginary. But that isn’t the truth, now, is it?”

Gregory was shocked but also relieved. “You _did_ see him! When you came in yesterday, I thought-”

Loki replied, simply, “Yes.”

“You…you made him go away.”

“Only for a little while, though. I’m afraid that what I did only frightened him a little.” Loki’s voice was quiet, matter of fact. Even while Steve was tempted to be pissed at him for not being exactly comforting, he could see the somewhat calming effect his earnestness was having on Gregory.

The boy’s voice was small, though, when he spoke again. “He’s coming back for me?”

“Eventually,” Loki answered. “I probably earned you a night or two of peace.” Steve figured it was a good time to cut in.

“What we want to do is make him go away for good, though,” he told Gregory. “That’s why Loki is helping me – because he understands magic and he knows what kind of a monster this thing is. But there are still a few things we’re not really sure about.”

Gregory managed to clear the unhappy thickness out of his throat. “Like what?”

Steve came closer to the bed, getting down on one knee so he could be on the same level as the kid. Gently he reached to rest part of one hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Before he first showed up, what’s the last thing you remember happening?” he prompted. “Did you see or hear anything that seemed weird?”

Gregory shook his head. “I was asleep. In my bedroom.” His voice started to break to terrified sniffles as he recalled it. “And then the bad teddy bear was in there with me.”

“You’re certain you didn’t do anything just before that?” Loki asked in a murmur. The boy shook his head.

Steve asked, “Where were your parents?”

“Out. Mom said they were going to have dinner with friends, after I went to sleep.”

“You were home by yourself?”

“Rumiko was there. I think she was watching TV. I heard her in the living room.” He scrubbed at his face with the back of one hand, trying to wipe away his tears. “I couldn’t call to her for help. I was too scared.”

“That’s okay, Greggy,” Steve assured him. “You didn’t do anything wrong. What happened to you isn’t your fault.”

But it sounded like the boy hadn’t witnessed or done anything that could help them. If somebody had summoned the thing that was haunting him, it’d been while he was asleep. Steve cast a look over at Loki, wordlessly asking him if there was anything else they could do here.

To his supreme astonishment, Loki came closer and knelt down in front of the boy as well.

“I have something for you,” he said to Gregory. He reached inside what looked to be one of many hidden pockets in his outfit and pulled out a small stone, smooth and dark and the perfect size to fit inside a little boy’s hand. “It’s a protective charm. It’ll keep you safe from the monster, if he comes back and we’re not around.”

The boy reached out to take it from him but the look on his face was still afraid. “He’s gonna be mad. That you made him leave. He’ll probably act even meaner.”

“Yes, but that won’t matter,” Loki told him quietly, firm. “Not so long as you hang onto this.” With a gentleness that Steve had to admit took him by surprise Loki curled the boy’s fingers around the stone. “Keep it close, and what stalks you will have not the power to touch you.”

Gregory cupped the talisman in both hands and held it against his chest. “Thank you.”

“You sleep well tonight, Greggy,” Steve told him with a half-smile. “You know what they say. A growing boy needs his rest.”

They were back out in the hallway, the door to the Mitchell boy’s room firmly closed behind them, before either Steve or Loki said anything to each other.

It was Loki who broke the silence in an airy, disdainful question. “Do you always speak in platitudes and unoriginal slogans when it comes to doling out advice? Or is it only when dealing with children?”

“So maybe I’m not all that good at improvising sometimes,” Steve retorted. “But what about you? How paranoid _are_ you that you’re apparently constantly carrying magical charms around?”

Loki’s eyes slid to give him a sideways, disdainful look. “I pulled that pebble from the base of a potted plant not five minutes ago.”

Steve gaped momentarily, bewildered. “But you said-”

“I lied.” At the demanding, indignant look on Steve’s face Loki gave a rolling shrug of his shoulders. “Have you never heard of something called ‘the placebo effect’?”

Steve felt comprehension dawning. “So you just gave it to him to give the kid some peace of mind.”

“It’s a bit more than that.” Loki nodded. “The creature we’re dealing with is an entirely spiritual entity. It’s only limits are set by the mind. Until now Gregory Mitchell has been easy prey because he’s given in entirely to his fear, which makes its power over him all the more strong.”

“But if he _thinks_ that it can’t touch him, that belief gives him power to be stronger, so that it really can’t,” Steve finished. “It’s like mind over matter.”

“More or less.” Not looking at him Loki reached inside his outermost layer of clothing and started pulling out the same ancient-looking book Steve had seen him reading before. Steve tried not to think too hard on the fact he was pulling it from a space that was definitely too small to have been concealing it. “But now we are at a definite dead end, since the child could tell us nothing of how his monster first appeared.”

“There has to be something,” Steve said, resolute. “I’m not giving up hope yet. Besides, and here I thought you would enjoy a puzzle.”

Loki gave an elegant roll of his eyes. “Not compulsively so. Without more observations for me to expand on, I’m running out of ways to be of use to you, Captain.”

“Steve,” he corrected him flatly. Loki said nothing.

He tried not to feel a sudden sense of frustration. He was pretty certain he _needed_ the sorcerer’s help if he stood any chance of helping this kid with his problems. But Loki wasn’t an ally, and whether or not he had a conscience he made a show of resistance against doing a good deed for the sake of it. Even after promising his aid Steve was worried about how there was nothing to keep him from walking away.

Not sure how to keep the conversation going, Steve reached out a hand for the book Loki now had tucked carelessly under one arm. “What is this thing that you’re reading, anyway-?”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Loki said sharply, and he tried to pull back out of reach. Steve tensed, surprised at that reaction, but what surprised him more was the brush his fingers had with the book’s cover.

Steve stared at it with wide eyes. What he had felt didn’t match what he saw. His fingers had briefly touched a glossy hardback, probably fairly new, not something that was ancient and bound in crumbling leather.

His gaze went to Loki’s face and he discovered that while the former supervillain looked affronted he also looked nervous and…embarrassed.

“What - are you doing some kind of variation on the fake book jacket trick?” Steve exclaimed, the pieces clicking together in his head in a bewildering and unexpected way. “What are you really reading?”

Loki glowered at him but when a moment, and then two, passed by and it became clear Steve wasn’t going to back down, he stole a look around them. Proving that no one else was around to see, Loki waved a swift hand over the book’s cover.

It turned bright green with an illustration of a boy in glasses astride a flying bird-like creature, below bold letters that read, _“Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”._ Steve laughed.

“It wasn’t my idea, it was Darcy Lewis’,” Loki snapped at him defensively. “She wouldn’t leave me alone until I had read the first one, and then after that-”

“I’m on the fourth one, myself,” Steve interrupted with a big grin. “I’ve been reading as fast as I can in my downtime. It’s been really hard, keeping away from people who’ll tell me how it ends.”

The faint flush of angry color that had risen to Loki’s cheekbones faded as he gazed at Steve, taken aback. There was uncertain suspicion in his eyes.

“Guess we must be the only two people left in the world who are reading the series for the first time now, huh?” Steve offered with camaraderie.

“Yes. I suppose that’s so,” Loki finally responded, hesitant. Like he didn’t know what to do with knowledge they had something in common. But when Steve moved in, closing the distance between them, he didn’t react so defensively anymore. He didn’t pull away.

“Maybe we should go sit down somewhere. Figure out our next move,” Steve offered.

Loki’s arms crossed over the cover of his book as he held it near to his chest, tightening in a way that didn’t seem intentional. Steve wondered when the last time was that Loki had worked with anybody like this. That he had been part of a ‘we’.

“Sounds like a plan,” Loki said finally, voice still and even.

Steve moved back, holding out an arm to indicate Loki could lead the way. He turned, Steve followed, and they walked the hallway at an even pace, side by side.

After almost a minute of silence, Steve found himself asking, voice abruptly working its way out of him in interest, “So what’s your favorite part so far?”

*

By the time they reached the cafeteria they had somehow worked their way up to a lively, excited conversation. Comparing notes on what they’d thought of certain scenes, certain characters. How Steve thought it compared to pulp novels and comic books from when he was a kid. What Loki thought as a real sorcerer from his perspective about the way magic worked in the books.

“The mechanics are flawed in major places, some of them laughably so,” he was telling Steve, matter-of-factly, as they found an empty table to sit down at. A few SHIELD employees stared at them. Neither of the men really noticed. “But it’s interesting to see the way certain principles are reapplied.”

“Is that so?” Steve asked, having not really followed anything he’d said for the past several minutes, but still interested and amused.

Loki nodded. And then he glanced around and belatedly appeared to realize how many people were in the dining area with them.

“Why is it so crowded in here?” he complained.

Steve shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe it’s pizza day,” he joked wanly. At Loki’s blank gaze he continued, a little perturbed, “Because people love pizza. You…you do know what that is, don’t you?”

There had been absolutely no trouble at all converting Thor on the wonders of human food. From what little prior contact he’d had with him Steve had always thought Loki had the faster learning curve than his sibling, but maybe that was limited to technology and pop culture.

Loki however looked positively disdainful. “I’m familiar with the dish. I am however underwhelmed by its alleged delectability.”

“And that’s how I know you’re an alien,” Steve remarked. When all that got from Loki was a dismissive flick of his eyes, before he went to paging distractedly through his book, Steve tried again. “Sounds to me like you’ve just never had _good_ pizza. There’s this little place in Brooklyn, back near where I grew up, that makes a mean pie that’ll make your mouth water.”

“I will take your word on it,” Loki returned wryly.

People were continuing to shoot looks their way. Some of them were just perturbed, like they couldn’t grasp the sight of the two of them sitting together in apparent peace. A few of the looks though were more directed Loki’s way, and they could be best described as ‘hostile’.

Loki had a regal indifference about him, but Steve thought he might be drawing further within in response to the anger being aimed his direction. As if he was reminding himself he wasn’t there to make friends or be liked.

“So what House are you?” Steve decided to ask, apropos of nothing. Loki lifted his head from the book at blink at him.

“Excuse me?”

Steve nodded at the book. “I guess there’s some kind of tradition for everyone who’s familiar with the book to say what Hogwarts House they think they’d be in. So which are you?”

Loki was silent for a moment, fingers curling against the open pages to subtly stroke them. “Guess,” he said finally, cold.

Steve set his jaw. “Well the obvious answer is Slytherin,” he replied, reluctant, somehow knowing from the other’s reaction that he was saying what Loki had expected and the wrong thing all at once, but not sure why. “I mean you’ve even got the color scheme.”

Loki favored him with a thin smile. “Exactly. I guess you must have your answer, then.” He lowered his gaze back to the book, evidently considering the matter settled.

Steve kept thinking about it. “Ambition is supposed to be the definitive trait for Slytherins,” he remarked aloud. “All those times you tried to take over the world or blow it up aside, I don’t know that I’d call you ‘ambitious’. You’re more…” He trailed off.

Loki’s body was still bent forward over his book, shoulders raised, but he’d lifted his head to peer at Steve with a kind of guarded interest.

“You’re a knowledge fiend,” Steve concluded, finally. “You’re inquisitive. You like books and old things. You’re a Ravenclaw.”

“Is that what you think?” Loki’s voice was empty, purposely devoid of emotion or concern. But there was a brightness in his eyes.

Steve had to smile, faintly. “It’s what _you_ think,” he determined.

Loki’s mouth twitched in a silent scoff, but he didn’t rebuke it out loud. Steve took that as confirmation and felt a small sense of triumph.

The Asgardian straightened up and leaned back, one elbow rested on the table, his posture careless and haughty. “What about you, Avenger?” He sneered. “I suppose you must put yourself in Gryffindor. Home of the heroes, and the brave.”

Steve actually chuckled at that. “No. I know people call me brave, but I…that’s not really how I think of myself.” His gaze drifted to the side. “Actually, if I had to pick a House for myself, it’d be Hufflepuff.”

Loki looked at him for a beat, before flatly repeating, “Hufflepuff.”

“Yeah. What?” Steve said in response to the look he was getting. “Hard-working and loyal. Who could object to that?”

Loki insisted, “No one actually _wants_ to be in Hufflepuff.”

“I do!” Steve retorted. He folded his arms, even as his voice trailed off in a slightly discomfited murmur. “I’m not ‘nobody’.”

“No, indeed,” Loki said softly, giving Steve a strange examining look, like he’d never paid him proper attention before.

The Asgardian had a weight behind his stare that Steve imagined could only come from being so old, a spark of methodical and cold genius to his eyes like he was imagining taking the Avenger apart. Steve tried not to visibly fidget or flinch.

“What are we going to do about Gregory Mitchell?” he asked, partially just to break the silence.

Loki didn’t move so much as a muscle as he answered, holding the same position with fingers curled underneath his chin.

“I need more information before I can do anything,” he stated, insistent. “We still have no idea how this thing came to attach itself to the boy. There’s nothing else I can offer.”

“Do you think the parents might know anything?” Steve questioned, not wanting the investigation to completely stall.

Loki shrugged his shoulders, and opened his mouth to respond, but he stopped as he was distracted by something happening out of the other’s line of sight. Steve turned around.

Thor, Tony and Clint had just walked in together. They appeared to be in the middle of a conversation though it was basically impossible to hear what the other two men were saying over Thor’s booming voice and laugh.

Noticing them, Tony ignored Loki and gave Steve a halfhearted wave in greeting. Clint stared directly ahead at Loki, arms crossed tightly over his chest, an expression like he would just love an excuse to pick a fight.

Oblivious to the tension, Thor raised one of his arms and waved animatedly in their direction, calling out with a beaming grin, “Good day to you, my friend Steve! And hello to you also, brother!”

Loki gave an annoyed, repressed sound, and shut his eyes with a grimace.

Hit by a sudden burst of inspiration, Steve pulled a tint sketchpad out of his pocket and started making a very quick doodle.

When he was finished, he pushed it across the table towards Loki. “There. About right, wouldn’t you say?”

Frowning, Loki dropped his hand from his brow to take in what Steve had drawn a picture of.

It was a very sketchy image of Thor, with thick glasses and a lightning bolt scar pasted onto his face, his massive bulk hunched down as he sat astride Mjolnir like it was a flying broomstick. With one hand he reached out for a Snitch that was flying in front of him.

“Now _that’s_ a Gryffindor,” Steve opined.

As Loki absorbed the picture, he let out an abrupt cackle of laughter, an uncontrollable reflex. He pressed fingers over his mouth but couldn’t hold it in, and within seconds he was laughing once more, loud and amused, his shoulders shaking.

Steve had to laugh too, as much at the idea as at Loki’s reaction.

The two of them continued, all but oblivious to the baffled stares of three other Avengers as they watched their teammate and a recent enemy sharing an entertained chuckle over a joke.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve’s routine on days when he wasn’t otherwise occupied involved getting up early to hit the gym. Nothing too fancy: a few rounds with a punching bag, lifting some weights. Enough to make him feel like he was putting in the effort.

Science and the military may have given him this body, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to work on it.

It was early enough that the sun still wasn’t up all the way. Towel draped around his neck, Steve padded through the near-silent halls and figured a shower could wait until after he’d gotten some breakfast.

At a T-shaped intersection just south of the small kitchen kept private for use by members of the team, he ran into Clint coming the other way.

The other man paused, looking him up and down, taking in his gym clothes. “You never do know how to relax, do you?”

Steve brushed it off as the flippant remark it was. “Thought I was the only one who got up at this hour.”

Clint barked out a weary laugh, blinking eyes that were even more heavy-lidded than usual. “I’m coming back from a mission overseas, man. I’m on my way to _bed_.”

Steve blinked in surprise then gave a brief grimace of sympathy. “You want something to eat first?” he pointed, offering. “I was gonna make pancakes.”

“Nah.” Clint pressed his palm over his face and scrubbed at it. “I’m good, thanks.”

Steve nodded, and as he turned to go into the kitchen he would’ve figured that would be that.

Instead, as he started putting ingredients together in a bowl, he found Clint had followed and was standing with one hand rested against the open doorframe, watching him.

“You know, the offer to set you up with that friend of mine from the Air Force sometime is still open,” Clint said, bringing up a thread of conversation from a few days ago. “If you’re interested.”

Steve pressed his mouth into a thin line and kept his gaze on the pancake batter he was mixing. Not that he didn’t appreciate his friends trying to look out for him but he was getting a little tired of the insinuations that he spent too much time by himself.

Maybe he did need to get out more. He just wasn’t sure a blind date was the best way to do that.

“I think I want to wait and see what happens with Sharon first,” he reminded Clint quietly.

Clint’s eyebrows went up a bit. “You’ve been _waiting_ for a couple months now,” he said, pointed.

Steve tried to smooth the tension out of shoulders as they tightened defensively. Agent Carter was a busy person, and so was he – and Steve still couldn’t work out if the only thing that drew him to her was how much she reminded him of Peggy. And even if that wasn’t it he wasn’t sure if he was ready to try seeing somebody, after…

The point was he needed time.

He shook his head and managed a smile. “Thanks, but no thanks, okay?” he told Clint, hoping it would be the final say on the matter.

Clint shrugged. “Hey, suit yourself. I can’t get into it too much, it’s kinda classified, but trust me when I say you and Carol have a _lot_ in common.”

“I’m sure,” Steve laughed. He started ladling batter out onto the hot skillet he had over the electric stove. It was still weird to him, turning on a burner and not experiencing the smell of gas.

Clint continued, his tone changing, “She’d be much safer company than what you’ve been keeping lately, that’s for sure.”

Steve stopped. So _that_ was what this was about. He let out a sigh.

“Why does me working with Loki bother you so much?”

“You’re kidding, right? After all the times I’ve been impaled, maimed, and nearly killed because of that guy. After all the innocent people he’s hurt. After all the times he’s hurt _you_ – or does your memory really suck that bad?”

Steve drew himself up and turned to face him. “Everybody deserves a second chance.”

“No, not everybody,” Clint retorted. Steve had no response to that but to turn away again, rolling his eyes. After a beat Clint continued, “You really think you can trust that guy? That he’s not just waiting for the right moment to stab you in the back?”

The accusation prickled against Steve’s skin. Not because he thought Clint was necessarily wrong – really, it was more the opposite. Clint was just voicing the same things the nagging little voice in the back of Steve’s head had been saying all along. That he was being stupid. That he was probably going to get himself killed.

“I appreciate your concern, but I can handle this okay,” Steve told him in a moment, forcing his voice to be calm. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Steve,” Clint replied, flatly, beyond skeptical. “You haven’t got a _clue_ what you’re doing.”

He met Clint’s eyes and he couldn’t really deny it. Rehabilitation had never been something he had much experience with before.

He couldn’t remember when it’d somehow become his responsibility to vouch for the paroled super villain.

“I think I’m old enough to have the right to make my own choices,” he asked wryly, “don’t you?”

Clint shook his head. “Not if they’re gonna be stupid ones,” he said with sardonic earnest.

Steve had to laugh at that, if wanly. He didn’t let himself think about how Clint made a good point.

“Why don’t you go get some sleep?” he offered. Their conversation seemed to be at an impasse anyway.

Clint relented with a rub at the back of his neck and disgruntled sound.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” was his parting shot as he stalked off.

“Course not,” Steve murmured to himself, holding back another sigh.

When he turned around again he wasn’t the least bit surprised to find Loki sitting at one of the chairs at the kitchen’s small table across from Steve. He leaned back with one leg crossed over the other, ankle to knee, looking as relaxed and composed as if he’d been there the entire time.

“Good morning to you, Captain,” he said smoothly.

If he was hoping to get Steve to jump or yelp or something, he was going to be disappointed. Loki had pulled this trick too many times for it to be all that startling anymore.

He was just relieved it wasn’t still across a field of battle, where the sorcerer’s next move would’ve been to aim his magic staff at his head.

“Is there a reason you can’t walk through a door like a mostly normal person?” Steve demanded, more curious than indignant.

Loki ignored the question.

“It seems I’m already causing a difficulty for you among your fellows,” he observed in a low murmur, his voice crisp and ominous.

Steve refused to rise to the bait. He’d already made up his mind about them working together. For better or worse, he needed Loki and his expertise.

If somebody wanted to talk him out of it, be that somebody one of the other Avengers or even Loki himself, they were going to have to do a lot better than ‘vague’.

“I don’t think either of us is really surprised,” was all Steve had to say on the matter.

He held up the skillet in offering. The scent of crisping golden-brown dough had begun to fill the air. “Want some breakfast?”

Loki blinked exactly once, slow and making no effort to conceal his bemusement. “All right,” he agreed at length.

Steve turned away again to fix him a plate, and a pause of several seconds stretched on before Loki had recovered enough to get rid of his puzzlement and appear unruffled once more. By then he had pulled something out of his pocket for Steve to see.

“I have something you might want to take a look at.”

Steve craned his head back, brushing off his hands against each other. “What is it?”

Silently Loki held up a piece of thick paper stretched out between his hands. It was thick, like parchment, or maybe even some kind of hide. There was an illustration on it and Loki held the image towards him.

As his eyes pieced together what he was looking at, Steve flinched back, alarmed. “Jesus,” he swore reflexively. “What _is_ that thing?”

Standing out starkly against the tan surface was a black and grey creature the size of a small house, four-footed and snouted and covered with thick shaggy fur. There were horns on top of its head and strange stylistic plumes emanating from around its body. It was reared up so it towered on its hind legs over the figures of half a dozen cowering peasants on the ground, who stared up at it in abject terror, as it bared jagged sharp teeth and great curling claws. He thought he recognized the art style – Japanese brushwork. It tended to get mimed a lot on kitschy collectables today, but he was willing to bet this particular old scroll was the real deal.

Loki gave a thinly amused smile. “An _oni_ ,” he pronounced elegantly. “Yet another name for our fear demon foe. As I told you, it has a role in many different mortal cultures.”

With one hand Steve set the plate of pancakes down on the table and pushed it towards Loki, with a detached stiffness that betrayed that he’d forgotten what he was doing. With the other he reached for the painted image Loki held. The sorcerer relinquished his grasp on it easily, allowing Steve to bring it closer to his own face for a better look.

Just gazing at it didn’t make much of a difference. Any way he looked at it was pretty horrifying.

“So this is what it looks like?” Steve sat down in the chair across from Loki, and tried to take it all in. _This_ was what Gregory Mitchell saw, when he was trapped in his bedroom with a monster nobody else could? No wonder the kid was traumatized.

Weight resting on his elbows Loki craned his head forward to take another glance at the painting. “It can be,” he said, offhand. “To the people of that culture, it almost assuredly would have had that kind of appearance. It would be what they were expecting.” He shifted his weight back, stretching his palm out. Steve returned the parchment to him with a frown of confusion.

“It doesn’t always look the same?”

“Eyes can’t really _see_ it. Not in the traditional way,” Loki explained. “Perceptions of those that look upon it alter the image that reaches them – by what they would expect to see when they look upon a monster; by what their hearts tell them to fear the most.”

“What did you see, when you first saw it?” Steve had to ask, bitterly curious.

Loki merely shrugged. “Nothing like that painted image. The boy, no doubt, sees something completely different from what I do. Could you see it, I’m sure you’d see something different as well.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

It made a kind of sense, in a way. Fears were personal things. No two people were ever really alike in them. So something that fed on terror would have to personalize itself to every nightmare.

When Steve glanced back up, Loki had already put the illustrated image away again. Instead he was staring at the plate Steve had put in front of him.

Four huge flapjacks were stacked in a neat pile topped off with butter and syrup. The set of Loki’s eyes was visibly affronted.

Steve had to laugh, part sheepish, part just plain amused. He got up and grabbed a plate for himself, and used a fork to lever two of the pancakes from Loki’s plate onto his.

“Sorry. I guess not everybody where you come from eats like your brother?”

With his fingertips Loki delicately peeled off yet a third pancake and dropped it onto Steve’s plate with its fellows, leaving only one for himself.

“No,” he said with a forced, stiff smile. “Though I’m more the exception that proves the rule.”

Steve jammed a forkful of food into his mouth to keep himself from asking any more questions. He was buzzing with faint curiosity, and experience had shown Loki tended to look at people who asked him about Asgard like he wanted to set them on fire.

Instead, when he finished chewing and swallowing, he took a different track.

“You know, what you said before, about you making things ‘difficult’ with the others,” he mused, slow. “Have you ever considered they might be a little less hostile toward you if you ever actually…well, _apologized_?”

There had been just enough time that SHIELD and the Avengers weren’t surprised anymore when Loki came around. That everyone was at least outwardly playing nice and pretending they didn’t think of him as a threat.

But to say there was still animosity towards him was an understatement. And mostly, Steve felt sorry for _Thor_. He was the one stuck having the play the balancing act between friend and family. But now he found himself getting to know Loki a little better, he couldn’t help wondering.

Why was it Loki always stood there and let the others glare at him? If he’d left his old ways behind, then that meant on at least some level he acknowledged what he’d done was wrong.

Steve would’ve expected more of an attempt at making amends, not this…detached _arrogance_. It wouldn’t have instantly made everything okay, but it certainly could go a long way toward smoothing things over a bit.

Anything else Steve might have had to say on the subject was halted though as he noticed the look Loki was leveling his way.

Ice cold, disdainful, and _angry_. A subtle but palpable fury.

“As I said before, I could care less what you or any of Thor’s other mortal allies think of me,” he exclaimed. The tension in the muscles of his face was so strong his lips parted in practically a snarl when he spoke. “I’ve paid the penalty for my deeds to the All-Father and been deemed satisfactory under Asgard’s law. I am not accountable to _you._ ”

Steve tried, “I only meant-”

“No.” Loki didn’t give him a chance. His voice grew tightly subdued again.

He settled back in his chair, arms resting against the tabletop, practically slumping. His gaze went off to the side, dark and fixated on something Steve couldn’t see.

“I’ve no intention to spend the rest of my existence begging for absolution. I cast it out of my hands,” he stated definitely. “I am either forgiven, or unforgivable.”

After a moment, Steve went, “That’s kind of…fatalistic.”

But if nothing else, he reminded himself again, Loki was proud. And he’d always seemed somehow cynically resigned to the ‘role’ he figured the universe had cast him into: that of the villain.

It made as much sense as anything did that even after switching sides, he wouldn’t go weeping and wailing in front of his judges. He’d march in silence, with his head held high, even if that meant things would be harder on him.

Loki didn’t say anything else, so Steve was eventually forced to shrug and relent.

“Whatever,” he decided. “It’s your life.”

Loki gave a thin wryly amused smile. “How kind of you to remind me.”

He half-expected Loki to vanish into thin air or go the straightforward approach of getting up and walking away. It was a surprise when he picked up the fork and knife left for him on the table and tucked into his breakfast.

“So,” Loki commented after they’d both been eating for some time, “in addition to having skills of artistic merit and not being too terrible a cook, what other secrets are you hiding?”

Steve chuckled. “You’re saying that _you_ find _me_ secretive?” he had to point out.

Loki made a mirthful sound, but whatever he was going to say faded along with the expression on his face as he lifted his head, looking at something over Steve’s shoulder. Steve turned in his chair to find Agent Coulson standing there with a file lightly grasped in one hand.

“At ease, Captain,” the agent said before Steve could fully rise out of his chair. His eyes tracked to take them both in. “Mr. Odinson. Good morning, gentlemen.”

“What’s going on?” Steve asked, a nervous flutter coming up in his stomach. He’d been able to get away with this little investigation because so far, he’d had nothing better or more official to do.

But if there was going to be a mission there was no telling how much time he’d lose. How bad things could get for the Mitchell kid before he got back. Or whether or not Loki’s interest would even hold out.

“Actually, I’m not here for you, Captain Rogers,” Coulson told him, successfully derailing Steve’s train of thought in surprise. The other man looked over at Loki again. “I’d like to talk to you.”

“ _Me_?” Loki repeated, incredulous and lofty but still obviously surprised. “What is it possibly that you could have to say to me?” ‘ _That I could care about’,_ being added in a silent undertone.

Coulson’s eyebrows went up ever so slightly. Other than that his face remained the same blank, composed mask.

“Trust me,” he remarked. “It’s something I think you’ll find very interesting.”

Loki gazed at him but of course that failed to produce any more offerings of information. He turned away from Coulson then, to instead favor Steve with a bemused expression of _‘Can you believe this guy?’_ It was so oddly conspiratorial that for a moment Steve was thrown for a loop.

“Might as well go see what he wants,” he finally offered Loki, with a shrug and a tilt of his head. “No reason not to.”

He wasn’t sure if Loki was actually considering what he had to say or just messing with him. “All right,” he decided, and got up from his chair. Agent Coulson gave a quick nod and started to walk off, indicating Loki should follow.

As they were leaving, Loki surprised Steve again by turning back to call over his shoulder, “Come find me later in the afternoon. We’ll discuss things more then.”

Right, Steve remembered, once he was alone with nothing but a half-eaten plate of pancakes: they were working on solving a problem. He’d asked for Loki’s help.

It wasn’t like they were spending time together because they were friends or anything.

*

In the afternoon Loki wasn’t found to be anywhere around the base. Steve was momentarily stymied until he remembered that Thor wasn’t the only person Loki showed up to visit from time to time. There was also Dr. Foster’s assistant, Darcy Lewis.

She lived right next door, technically still on the base, in SHIELD supplied housing. Steve still felt a little awkward just walking up to her apartment door and knocking.

“Hang on a sec, be right there…” The door opened a few inches and the brunette stuck her head out, peeking up at him.

“Oh! Hey.” She blinked a few times, in the manner of someone trying to play it cooler than they really felt. “Nice to see you, Captain. Uh, America.” She bit her lip. “Loki said you might be stopping by.”

He smiled at her, amused, trying to be reassuring. “It’s nice to see you again too, Ms. Lewis."

Her nose wrinkled up. “Eww. God, please don’t. Just call me Darcy – I’m not an old lady yet. Come on in.”

She opened the door the rest of the way for him and then fairly flounced away, leading him to what passed as the living room.

Loki was stretched out on the couch, his feet on the coffee table, his Harry Potter book opened between his hands. Darcy seemed completely unperturbed about him scuffing up her furniture. Then again, it wasn’t really _her_ furniture. Maybe that was why.

“You guys have fun playing Mystery Inc.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, indicating another section of the apartment. “I’ve got a thing going on over there. Please don’t set the couch on fire.”

“Uh, okay,” Steve said, but Darcy was glowering at Loki, pointed.

He didn’t look up from his reading. “You already know that was an accident,” he said to her dully, in a tone of reminder. Clearly this was a story Steve had missed out on.

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she said, dismissive. “And _you_ already know that you’re on notice because of it.”

“That was months ago-” Loki began, voice rising because she was walking away again.

“On notice!” Darcy repeated back in a yell, without missing a beat.

In the wake of her exit Steve sat down in an armchair, bemused. To say watching the completely normal civilian woman interact so carelessly with Loki was different would be an understatement.

Loki didn’t seem in any hurry to start the conversation going. Steve supposed it was up to him.

“So what did Coulson want with you this morning?” he asked, curious.

Loki’s eyes didn’t rise to meet him. His fingertips flicked, turning over a page. “There was a situation he was aware of as something I might be interested in,” he answered vaguely. When Steve kept looking at him, expecting more, he finally looked up.

“Sorry, Captain,” he told him freely. “But it’s a story I have no intention of sharing.”

Steve restrained himself from sighing. It probably wasn’t important anyway. He was supposed to be focusing on his problem, not whatever else Loki was up to.

“Fine.” He nodded at the book. “Still at it, I see.”

Loki’s mouth quirked, amused. “Yes.”

“Who’s your favorite character so far?”

Loki gave him an odd look. Like he couldn’t quite buy Steve really wanted to talk about this and was suspicious of what was really going on.

“What?” Steve demanded, calmly enough. “We not allowed to make small-talk, either?”

“I’m trying not to get too attached,” Loki said, finally. “But I’m intrigued by Sirius Black.”

Well, that was different. Though maybe looking at what type of character Sirius was – trouble maker, former criminal – it was also kind of laughably predictable. “What do you mean you’re trying not to get too attached?”

The set of Loki’s mouth turned bitter. “Because it seems obvious that he’s marked to die.”

Steve blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“He’s a tragic figure. A wanderer and rogue that had most his life taken from him. Imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, forever in shadow because of it.”

Leaning forward to look at how much of the book Loki had actually read, Steve had to remark, “You’re not supposed to know that he’s innocent yet. That’s all the way at the end.”

“They make too much of an emphasis over his guilt, how horrid his crime was,” Loki murmured. “If he were actually just a criminal, a madman trying to kill the hero, it would be too straightforward. There would be no drama to it. The story of a wronged innocent is much more captivating.”

When he said it like that it did make sense. Steve made himself more comfortable in his chair. “I didn’t know you were so big on literary analysis.”

Loki’s sharp eyes drifted from the book over to meet Steve’s. “It has nothing to do with analysis. I know stories. How they work, the way they always unfold.”

His fingers moved absently over the pages bound in his lap, smoothing down their surface.

“Bards and poets have been telling the same tales from the beginning of speech and time. There are patterns. Devices that can be expected.” His mouth twisted. “The audience wants their hero to succeed, to triumph, but only after he has suffered. There must be loss along the way. Defeats. Someone, inevitably, has to die if only to make a point.”

“And you think that someone has to be your favorite character.”

“I did not say he was my favorite,” Loki argued, petulantly. “And, yes. It fits. Part of Harry’s definition is that he is an orphan. Sirius is supposed to be his godfather – if he lives, it would be his duty to foster the boy. Harry would have a loving, stable home.”

“And we can’t possibly have that,” Steve said, half-seriously, because Loki was starting to freak him out a bit. Steve was only one book ahead but so far he was doing a pretty good job of predicting things.

“To have a potential loving father figure revealed, something that the hero has never had or known, only to lose him,” Loki explained, agreeing. “That would be a dramatic loss. Another step along his overarching journey.”

Steve contemplated how angry Loki might be if he ruined the suspense and just told him that by the second task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament, Sirius was still alive and fine. That it was okay to get invested in him after all.

“Why don’t you keep reading,” he settled for saying. “Maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

Loki gave him a look both dubious and dismissive. Clearly he thought Steve was trying to placate him. Steve hid a smile.

Darcy wandered in again, holding a small device in her hand that Steve had come to know as an ‘iPhone’. From the look she was giving them it seemed she’d overheard the conversation.

“Seriously? Are you guys having a Harry Potter book club in here?” she demanded, snorting. “I thought there was some kind of top secret super-heroics going on. You know, something cool.”

“The only reason I’m reading it is because of you,” Loki insisted.

“Dude, I made you read the _first_ one,” she returned, unimpressed. “Two later and you’re still going strong? I don’t think so. You’re just as dorky as the rest of us would-be Hogwarts students. Enjoy your time in Slytherin.”

Loki scowled in a distinctly put-out manner.

“Loki’s not a Slytherin, he’s a Ravenclaw,” Steve put in, if only because he felt like he had to contribute to this conversation somehow. Darcy’s eyes very slowly slid over to him. “…What?”

“America’s most famous, patriotic flash-frozen superhero,” Darcy replied, her words coming gradually and staccato, “and an ancient Viking alien sorcerer-god, are sitting around talking about which Hogwarts houses they think they’re in. This day just reached whole new levels of epic weird.”

“He thinks he’s a Hufflepuff,” Loki informed Darcy helpfully.

She made a scandalized sound of disbelief. “Are you kidding me?”

“What’s wrong with being a Hufflepuff?” Steve demanded, trying not to feel so hurt.

“Um, they’re kind of the loser house. I mean it’s pretty obvious JK Rowling only made up the other two so she’d have a place to put students who aren’t the good guys or budding sociopaths,” she declared. “Nothing about them is even remotely interesting. Who _self-sorts_ as a Hufflepuff?”

“What about Cedric Diggory?” Steve asked her pointedly. “The way he’s described in the book, I thought he was supposed to be pretty neat.”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and look what happened to him.”

Steve’s amusement swiftly faded replaced by a cold shock of nervousness. “What?” He stared at her, concerned. “Why, what happens to Cedric?”

Loki meanwhile had his face wrinkled in confusion. “Who is ‘Cedric Diggory’?” he demanded, pronouncing the name with a lack of familiarity.

Darcy’s face fell. Eyes wide she looked back and forth between the two of them.

“Both of you need to read faster,” she got out eventually.

Steve would’ve gladly pressed her for more information, ominous hole in his stomach and all, but she held up a hand to stop him.

“Look, the reason I came in here is ‘cus I think I might’ve found something that could potentially help you two with your thing. I mean – no promises, but it’s interesting. Anything to help that poor kid out, right?”

He glanced at Loki, distantly surprised he told Darcy about what was going on. Loki’s only response was a slight shrug.

“Go on,” he told Darcy, not offering Steve further explanation either.

She nodded and held up her iPhone. “So I got curious, and I tried doing a Google search using the words ‘nightmare’, ‘ghost story’, and ‘teddy bear’…and, unsurprisingly, I got pages of hits that were not helpful at all. But after I weeded through a little the same thing popped up a couple times.”

There were several words in that account Steve couldn’t understand but he focused on the relevant parts. “What was that?”

Darcy focused on the device again, tapping at the screen with her fingers in a distracted way that reminded him of Tony.

“It’s something called ‘ _hitori kakurenbo’_. It means ‘playing hide and seek by yourself’. From the description it basically sounds like a Japanese version of ‘Bloody Mary’.”

She looked up to find both Steve and Loki giving her blank, quizzical looks.

“Right. Neither of you have ever been a teenage girl,” Darcy observed. “Um, it’s like this urban legend, part ghost story part game. It’s a thing kids do when they’re having a party to try and freak themselves out. Only, I guess this is…not at a party, and in Japan.”

She trailed off sounding much less certain of herself. Steve, however, was remembering something.

“There was an exchange student staying with the Mitchells around the time Gregory first started acting out.” He looked over at Loki, meeting his eyes. “They said she was Japanese.”

It could be a coincidence. It seemed like too big of one just to ignore, though.

Evidently Loki was having the same thought. He brought his hands together, lacing his fingers and resting his chin atop.

“It bears investigating.”

“I’ll get the name of the girl and where she is now from Gregory’s father,” Steve offered. “We can probably go and talk to her by sometime tomorrow afternoon.”

“Unfortunately Captain, I’ve already made plans for tomorrow afternoon,” Loki responded, to his surprise.

In response to Steve’s skeptical look he merely shrugged. “Certainly you can handle it without me. Report back later if you uncover any significant details.”

And with that he got up from his seat and walked calmly out of the room.

Steve looked over to Darcy, but she only shook her head.

“Don’t ask me. I have no idea what ‘plans’ he’s talking about, either.”

*

With the sudden removal of Loki from the equation aside Steve’s next moves unfolded more or less exactly like he’d planned.

He talked to Dr. Mitchell again. The girl turned out to be living with her second host family a few states over. He had less trouble than he would’ve thought requisitioning one of SHIELD’s planes for a quick field trip.

The first surprise ended up being that he didn’t make the trip alone after all.

“Come on, I’m coming with you,” Darcy insisted with buoyant enthusiasm. “I know I’m not an expert in magic or anything or a superhero, but I can help anyway. And it will be so less boring than if you go alone.”

“Being bored wasn’t really on my list of concerns,” Steve told her. He was more surprised than bothered, to be honest. Up until recently he had the impression the lab assistant had been intimidated by him. He was glad to see that apparently she wasn’t.

“It should be.” Darcy sighed. “Okay, well say I’m filling in for Loki, then. I’ll be his substitute.”

“Would Loki agree with the assessment that you can be his replacement?” Steve asked her, pointed, with a wry grin.

“I didn’t say _that!_ ” she yelped, put-upon. Still she refused to leave Steve’s side, it taking some hurrying on her pat to match his stride. “Consider me your secret weapon.”

“How so?”

“This is a teenage girl you’re going to be talking to, and one from one of the most modern tech-savvy cultures on the planet,” Darcy said to him, triumphantly. “Between the two of us, who do you think stands a better chance of being able to understand her on like a deeper level?”

Now she really did have a point.

“If you’ve really got nothing better to do, I don’t mind you tagging along.”

“Sweet!” She pumped a fist in the air. “Does this make me an honorary Avenger?”

“You’ll have to take that up with Director Fury,” he told her. Darcy paled.

Steve had to admit he wasn’t entirely sure what it was that fueled the unlikely friendship between Darcy and Loki. Not that he didn’t think the young woman was likeable. But Loki was so prickly and difficult he would’ve assumed any “mortal” would have to be extraordinary for Loki to put up with them.

Darcy Lewis, by contrast, was so…normal.

“How did the two of you end up friends, anyway?” Steve asked her midway through the trip. He knew the two had been connected already before Loki even showed up on the team’s radar. He’d never been able to get the whole story though.

“It’s pretty complicated,” Darcy replied. “Like, seriously. There was amnesia involved and everything. His, not mine.”

“Okay,” Steve said slowly, trying to take that in. Noticing the look on his face, Darcy gave him an expressive shrug.

“Guess you could just say we got used to tolerating each other. I don’t know.” She tried thinking about it. “I don’t really put up with a lot of the stuff he tries to pull at times. But I think that might be something he likes. You know? Everyone needs a place or a person they can go to sometimes to feel like they’re having a time-out from their regular deal.”

“Yeah, sure,” Steve mused, thinking he got it. He knew there were times when he wanted to feel normal, not like a superhero or a soldier or Captain America; when he only wanted to be _him_.

He supposed it wasn’t much of a stretch to think somebody like Loki could want that too.

Darcy looked straight ahead, a few strands of hair moving errantly around her face, pushed there by a stray breeze from an air vent.

“He’s not a _bad_ person, really. He’s just very, _very_ screwed up.”

“He seems like he’s got a lot of anger,” Steve offered charitably. Darcy gave a huffing sound, rolling her eyes.

“Try like a couple centuries’ worth.”

“Did he say anything else to you about where he was going today?” he asked her, still curious. He had guessed that whatever it was it probably had to do with that conversation he’d had with Agent Coulson. Outside of that though he had no real idea.

Darcy shook her head. “All he would give me when I kept pressing him was that he was going to Maine.”

“Well I doubt he’s going for the lobster,” Steve remarked, which was a weak joke, but he was too puzzled to think of much else to say.

“See, when Loki refuses to tell anybody something? He’s either screwing around, trying to drive us crazy with the ‘mystery’ because he thinks it’s funny, or it’s something personal and he just doesn’t want anyone to know for his own reasons.”

“Which do you think this is?”

Darcy was quiet a moment. She played with the frames of her glasses. Finally, she said, “He borrowed my computer before he left and forgot to clear his browser history. He was looking up the name of some private psychiatric institute.” She paused, quiet. “Guess they specialize in treating people who are both messed up in the head _and_ have special or weird powers.”

That basically described Loki to a T. Not to mention if the facility had enough of a reputation, it would definitely be something Coulson and SHIELD knew about.

It was however, a little difficult to imagine Loki accepting that kind of help so easily. But maybe that was what all the secrecy was about.

After a silence Darcy looked at Steve sideways. “Don’t you _dare_ say anything to him about this,” she said intensely, actually approaching something like a threatening tone. “He would kill me if he found out I told you. I mean, not _literally_ ; I mean, I sure don’t think so, but-”

“It’s okay,” Steve reassured her. “I get it. And I wouldn’t say anything, either.”

Darcy breathed out in a heavy puff of air and neither of them said anything else to each other until they reached their destination.

Not far from the airport where they’d been able to land was an upscale suburban neighborhood, with a lot of white two or three story houses and rolling green lawns across hills. The kind of place that people Steve grew up with back in Brooklyn might’ve fantasized about moving to someday.

Maybe some of them even did, eventually. He didn’t really know. He’d lost touch with a lot of people over the years for a lot of different reasons.

As they walked up the driveway of the address they’d been given, the front door to the house opened and a girl walked out. Right away Steve knew she had to be the girl they were looking for.

“Rumiko Fujikawa?” Steve called.

She froze in her tracks, midway through the action of putting a pair of ear-buds in, looking at them with wide uneasy eyes. She was probably about sixteen, seventeen years old. Her hair was cut in a strange multilayered style with a streak each of bright pink and electric green near the front. Her nail polish was dark and metallic and her lip gloss was candy colored. And, somewhat amusingly, Steve noticed she was wearing a t-shirt that had pictures of the Mark III Iron Man and War Machine armors printed on it.

“Dibs on ‘good cop’,” Darcy quipped to Steve in an aside as they walked towards the girl.

“Knock it off,” Steve murmured back at her, distracted.

Rumiko looked back and forth between the two of them as they reached her. “Can I help you?” she offered in a timid voice that had only the barest trace of an accent.

“Hi,” Steve offered as an opening, because the last thing he wanted to scare her. “We’re from the government. You’re not in any trouble; there are just some questions we were hoping you could answer.”

She stared up at him with eyes that he quickly suspected had become wide for different reasons: “You. You’re…Captain America, aren’t you?” she asked, having recognized him even though he wasn’t wearing his costume or even his military uniform.

“Yeah. That’s me,” he confirmed. “I was wondering if there was something you could help me with.”

“ _Me?_ ” she squeaked, as she looked at Steve, visibly agog.

“This is about Gregory Mitchell,” Steve told her.

“Remember? The Mitchells? The family you stayed with for a few months over the summer,” Darcy interjected. “Gregory was their son.”

Rumiko’s expression visibly went through a dramatic shift.

Steve realized aloud, “You know something. Don’t you?”

The girl swallowed. She looked guilty, afraid, but also notably, very sad.

“It was an accident,” she said tearfully. “The last thing I ever would’ve wanted was to hurt Greggy.”

“Why don’t you back up and start from the beginning,” Steve asked. “Explain just what was ‘an accident’.”

She hugged herself where she stood, her eyes closing briefly with a pained look. “It was so stupid,” she began. “ _Hitori kakurenbo_. It’s this game, it-”

“I know what it is,” Darcy stopped her. “I looked it up on the internet.” She glanced over at Steve, explaining for his benefit.

“You take a toy animal and rip the stuffing out of it, then you fill it up again with rice that’s got pieces of your fingernail clippings inside it. Then you do all this weird stuff – you stab it with something sharp like a knife, say out loud that you’re going to play hide and seek, and then throw it in a tub full of water. Then you run and hide.” She made a face, reacting to the macabre nature of what she was describing. “You’re supposed to do it at night with all the lights off. And you hide until morning. If nothing happens to you, you go get the toy and say you’ve won the game.”

Rumiko nodded, confirming it. She still had her arms folded and wrapped around her sides. With one foot she kicked the ground.

“The girls in my homeroom made a pact,” she explained, tersely. “We said we would all play the game once before summer was over.”

“It sounds like a great way to give yourself the creeps,” Steve said slowly, frowning. He had a foreboding sense. For some reason the hair on the back of his neck was starting to stand up. “But what does that have to do with what’s happening with Greggy?”

Rumiko lifted her head to look up at him, beseeching.

“I did it the last month I was staying with the Mitchell family. Mrs. Mitchell had told me her and her husband were going to be out. I didn’t realize Greggy was already home. He was asleep in his room and I never saw him.”

When neither of them seemed to understand what she was saying, she added, miserably, “The rules say you’re supposed to make sure you’re alone in the house when you play.”

“Well, sure,” Darcy retorted. “What better way to make sure you freak yourself out?”

Rumiko gave a stiff nod. “That’s what I always thought, too. But – the explanation that goes with the story of how the game is played, is that if someone else in the house …what you’re hiding from, it might find _them_ instead.”

Steve finally understood. “That’s what happened,” he breathed softly.

“It ‘found’ Greggy,” Rumiko said, sounding like she was going to burst into tears at any moment. “When I heard him cry out I realized. I ended the game and burned the toy, like I was supposed to, but it was too late.”

“Why didn’t you say anything to the Mitchells about this?” Steve questioned her. “When he started acting strangely, right before you left…”

“I didn’t know if they’d believe me. It sounds just like a silly story.” She admitted, “And I was too scared to take the blame for what I’d done.” She dropped her head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It was an accident,” Darcy said to her, comfortingly, giving her a pat on the shoulder. “You didn’t mean for this to happen. But now that we know what’s going on, these guys can try and make it better. Right?” She turned towards Steve, hopeful.

Steve didn’t know. But having an explanation to what had caused the problem in the first place had to put them one step closer towards fixing it. Right?

He didn’t know anything about magic. He shouldn’t be making any promises.

But in spite of himself he said out loud, “I’m sure we’ll be able to fix it now.”

They hung around for a few minutes more until it felt like Rumiko had calmed down a little.

As they were leaving, she told them, haltingly, “Could you say hi to Greggy for me? And tell him I’m sorry.” She breathed. “I really hope you’re able to fix this and he goes back to being okay.”

Steve managed to give her a smile. “I’ll tell him. And, thanks for your help.” Acting on a whim, he added, “Hey, how would you like it if I got Tony Stark to send you an autograph?”

She blinked in disbelief, her cheeks coloring. “I-Iron Man-sama?” she gasped, disbelieving. “Yes! I’d… _arigato gozaimasu_! Thank you!”

The young girl seemed to be in a much better mood when they left.

“That was sweet,” Darcy commented. “Guess it just figured she’d be a fangirl.”

When Steve gave her a questioning glance, she returned his gaze with a knowing smile.

“Trust me, Captain. _Nobody_ fangirls harder than Japan.”

*

Steve found himself wandering the halls of the base when he got back. His thoughts were restless to the point where it ended up channeled into his feet. He walked with only half a real aim. Trying to find Loki, trying to find someone to talk to. Trying to make sense of everything that was going on in his mind.

It had all started as a childish dare carried out by a teenager. To think, something that simple and seemingly unimportant could almost destroy a little boy’s life.

But Rumiko was young herself, no less a kid really than Gregory. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know what she was doing.

Steve still didn’t fully understand what she _did_ , and even he knew that.

He never knew whether it made things better or worse, when bad things happened and nobody was at fault. There was no ‘bad guy’ here – there were just honest, awful mistakes.

Not sure what else to do he decided to head down to Gregory’s room again and see how the kid was doing. If he was hanging in there or if his monster had come back.

Three floors before where he would’ve needed to get off though the elevator door opened, and Loki sauntered in like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Steve could tell by the slanted, knowing look in his eyes that he had known Steve would be there. That he was looking for him.

It was probably just memories and prior bad experience that made Steve react to that idea nervously.

He cleared his throat. “So we had quite the eventful conversation with the exchange student.”

“I heard,” Loki responded calmly. _Too_ calmly, Steve’s instincts were screaming at him. Something felt off here. Steve tried to tell that part of his head to shut up.

He still had to resist the urge to flinch or fidget as he stood there, his elbow practically brushing Loki’s. “Did Darcy fill you in on what we found out?” He turned his head to meet the other man’s eyes, not entirely sure where his reluctance was coming from.

“Oh no. We had other matters to discuss, it turns out.”

At Steve’s questioning stare, Loki gave him an incredibly thin-lipped smile.

“I regret to inform you that I’ve not decided to go in for counseling, Captain. My visit to the institute was for a far less personal matter. So _sorry_ to be the bearer of disappointment.”

He sounded absolutely not sorry at all. His tone was all silk and venom.

Steve’s mouth open and shut, his brow furrowing as he tried to figure it out. Loki had never been a literal mind-reader before.

“How did you-?”

“Darcy confessed,” Loki informed him, curtly. “I had hardly to look at her funny and she blurted out the whole story.” He smiled with distant amusement, eyes half-lidded. “For some reason people oft lose the ability to lie very convincingly around me. Even when it comes to lies of omission.”

“Takes one to know one, you mean,” Steve offered in return, brusque. He’d no idea what was up with the attitude Loki was working, but he was burning through all the goodwill Steve had developed towards him exceptionally fast. Like that, he was back to the old feelings of mistrust and barely restrained resentment.

Loki was unmoved. “Something like that.”

“What the heck’s gotten into you all of a sudden? I thought-”

“You thought _what_ , Captain? That I was ‘safe’? That I was powerless? That I could be tolerated, that I was alright to be around now because I was forced to operate at the same level, that at last you understood me?”

“Yeah,” Steve retorted, “you know what; I did. I _did_ think I understood you. All this time, it was hard to think of you as anything other than an alien, because that’s how your actions always seemed to me: _alien_. But these past couple of days, I’ve thought, ‘You know, he’s not so bad. Who knows, maybe even underneath it all he might actually be a decent guy’.” He looked Loki up and down, angry and disgusted. “But now I guess you’re trying to tell me that I’m wrong.”

Loki drew in a breath, up at his full height, bristling. “You were wrong the moment you supposed that you and I could have anything in common.”

With a ding the elevator door slid open. Loki moved to exit. As soon as he saw that, Steve lunged, blocking the way from him by stretching his arm and part of his upper body across the door.

“No. You don’t get to walk away in the middle of this,” Steve ordered. “Not until you’ve helped me with that kid. You promised.”

Loki scowled at him. “I made no such promise.”

“Maybe not in so many words,” Steve replied, hot. “But I _need_ your help on this. You’re the only shot I’ve got, and that’s more important to me than whatever _issues_ it is that you’re having.”

“Get out of my way,” Loki snapped.

“No,” Steve refused. The sorcerer leaned in, the confines of the elevator making it possible to look down into his face at such an angle that it seemed like he was looming over him.

“Remove yourself from my path, mortal, or I will-”

“…Um.” They were both interrupted by the meek sound of a throat clearing.

Loki and Steve slowly turned their heads to discover three SHIELD office workers standing there, waiting for the elevator, all of them with looks on their faces like they might be about to wet themselves.

“It’s okay,” the one in the middle, a bespectacled man that looked like an engineer, said feebly. “We’ll just catch the next one.”

Some of the tension that had been riding Steve broke off, crumbling. He turned his head and exchanged a look with Loki.

By some silent accord, Steve dropped his arm. Loki slid a step back. The elevator doors closed again, trapping them in there alone. They both gazed straight ahead, arms limply at their sides, and didn’t say anything, didn’t look at or touch one another.

The way Steve figured it was that they’d both lost control and were both embarrassed. Maybe for different reasons, but still.

“Seriously,” he said, after the silence had thickened to the point to be considered too awkward, “what’s the deal? You – don’t have to talk about it, if you really don’t want to, but I can’t help feeling that I’m owed some sort of explanation.”

It took Loki several seconds to respond. When he did every syllable was grated, like he needed to force them out past his teeth.

“I dislike being seen as weak.”

Steve was taken aback. “I can guarantee that I will _never_ think of you as weak. I’ve been almost killed by you one too many times to ever think that.”

Loki shook his head ruefully. “There is more than one type of vulnerability.”

“You’re upset that I thought you might be feeling like you needed a shrink?” He supposed he had heard slightly less crazy explanations. “I…I don’t even know if I need to apologize for that. It’s not much of a stretch. Pretty much anyone can see that you’ve been through a lot.”

“I am incredibly damaged,” Loki concurred with such bluntness it took Steve’s breath away. “But I’m capable of managing my own affairs. I function, from one day to the next. And my mind is a chaotic enough space without anyone’s fingers in it but mine own.”

He stood there and breathed in and out, and for once it really hit Steve just how hard it had to be sometimes to even do that much. That Loki was easily more messed up than anyone on the team – and considering who they had on their roster, that was really saying something.

“If it wasn’t for you, then, why did you go to Maine?” Not that it really mattered anymore. But Steve needed something else to focus on.

Loki closed his eyes briefly, rubbing at his forehead.

“They have a patient there – a young woman with an incredibly fragile mind and an equally powerful affinity for chaos magic,” he explained tiredly. “The healers are doing what they can for the former, but they’ve no real experience with the latter. Your Agent Coulson thought I might take an interest in the case.”

Steve watched him. “So, have you? Are you going to help her?”

Loki’s eyes moved, but he wasn’t looking at him. “She could be extraordinary, if she learned how to control it,” he breathed. “Her power would be beautiful. I want to _see_ that.”

Steve gathered that was supposed to be a yes.

“Good. Uh…I’m glad to hear that,” he offered.

The elevator finally reached the right floor. They exchanged a look after the door opened, each waiting for the other to go first.

Steve made a gesture with a semi-forced, sheepish smile, a look which to his surprise Loki weakly returned, and they stepped off at the same time.

Apparently now that they’d had their little blow-out, they were back to being able to work together once more.

“So,” Loki began, sounding much more composed, “why don’t you go ahead and tell me whatever this was you learned.”

*

It took less time than Steve would’ve thought for him to relate everything to Loki. Rumiko’s story. The way that the strange, dark game she had played had worked. How they thought Gregory had accidently gotten caught in the middle.

When he had finished he lifted his eyes up to examine Loki.

The sorcerer was leaning against the wall with one arm folded across his midsection, the pointer finger of his free hand pressed against his mouth. He was considering the information with deep scrutiny.

“It all makes a kind of sense,” he said, at last.

“Does it?” Steve asked. “I have to admit, I’m still not sure how we get from this game that kids play to this fear spirit or whatever following Gregory Mitchell around.”

Loki gave him a look of nearly condescending impatience. “The ‘game’, as you call it, obviously has its roots in some other, older tradition,” he said flippantly. “The steps to it contain everything necessary to perform a summoning ritual.”

“Summoning ritual?” Steve repeated, not so much not following as uncertain he wanted to.

“The use of fingernail clippings to bind the creature to one’s personal essence, and as a sacrifice. The speaking of commands out loud as invocation. The darkness, the knife, the fire.” Loki ticked it off on his upraised fingers. “Even the premise of the game itself – it creates a form, a contract that the summoned creature must follow. The terms are that it has to find a host in order to remain in this realm, otherwise it be cast back to where it came from.”

Steve all but gaped at him, taking it in.

“Are you telling me,” he finally asked, slow, “that every time teenagers in Japan play this game, they’re unknowingly summoning up an evil spirit?”

“As long as they do everything the way they’re supposed to, it can do them no harm.” Loki shrugged. “But this girl you spoke of failed to follow instructions. What she called forth found a body to attach itself to. That it was not the same soul that originally entered into contract with it is irrelevant.”

“So what do we do now?” Steve asked. “Can we use the same ritual to send it back again?”

Loki shook his head. “Too late. It won the game – it ‘found’ the boy. The spell that first drew it here can do nothing to it now.”

“There has to be something,” Steve insisted, sounding as anxious as he felt. He couldn’t begin to think they’d gone through all this for nothing, no answers.

“There might be a way,” Loki stated.

Steve looked at him unblinkingly, hopeful. He waited.

“Well?”

Loki gave a smirk, a slightly less malevolent version of a look Steve realized he recognized. It was a look that spoke of excitement about creating trouble and facing something dangerous.

“On this plane of existence there’s nothing we can do to hurt it. It has no physical self. But elsewhere is another story.”

“Elsewhere, like…where?” Steve asked slowly, suspicious.

“Inside the boy’s dreams,” Loki explained, like it was the most straightforward thing in the world. “His mind.”

Steve tried to wrap his head around that. Funny how this whole misadventure kept finding whole new ways to push his limits. Here when he’d thought he didn’t even have any limits left.

“You…we can do that?”

Still smiling, Loki simply nodded.

Steve took a deep breath. Anything he could do, he’d said. He’d promised.

“Okay. Let’s go, then.”

*

Late that night found them back in Gregory Mitchell’s room.

The little boy was sound asleep in the bed. The doctor had sedated him again.

According to Loki, that was a good thing. They needed to be certain the boy stayed entirely asleep all the way through what they were about to do.

“Are you ready, Captain?” Loki asked.

Steve noticed that in his curled fist Gregory still clutched the pebble Loki had given him, and sagely decided against saying anything.

“I’m ready,” he answered.

Loki gestured to the floor. “Sit,” he commanded him. Steve went where he bid, crossing his legs and making himself comfortable as he could.

With a piece of what looked like ordinary chalk Loki sketched a figure eight around Steve and the bed that held Gregory. Then he started adding more around it, filling in complicated symbols and runes.

Steve tried not to watch him too hard, focusing instead on keeping his breathing nice and slow.

Loki would use his magic to open up a door into the world inside Gregory’s dreams. He’d send Steve’s mental self there, where he’d be able to fight a version of the monster that he could see and hit. Bringing it to a level that Captain America was actually capable of doing something about it.

Neither of them had the easy part. It would take intense concentration from Loki. And Steve…if the thing hurt him in the dream, it could very well be the death of him in reality.

Just another day in the life of a ‘hero’, he supposed.

“That should be it.” Loki straightened at last, briefly rubbing his hands against each other to roll off the last traces of chalk. “I can begin, now.” He paused, slowly pivoting to fix Steve with an unblinking look. “If it comes down to it I can probably give you some assistance in there, but for the most part it will be entirely up to you. I ask you again, Captain – are you ready?”

Steve felt unnerved, and had the idea that was exactly what Loki was going for. “Yeah,” he replied, more slowly this time. “Why do you ask?”

Loki’s smile was humorless. It looked like a mask. There was something strange, glimmering, in his eyes.

“Do you trust me?”

There was a nagging sensation, like Steve was supposed to think long and hard before he decided to answer. But he couldn’t find that there was anything left to weigh. He had already made up his mind he was doing this.

“Yes.”

Loki’s smile grew wider. It stretched the corners of his face; Steve half expected to see his skin start splitting at the seams.

“You realize that you’re putting yourself completely at my mercy,” Loki spelled out for him, smooth. “Your mind and soul will be in my hands. And while you are away, I will be the one who is left alone with your unconscious body.”

Steve felt a sudden surge of panic and anger. “Why are you doing this?” he demanded. He didn’t understand why Loki felt the need to keep pushing this way. Like he wanted to be hated.

Maybe he did prefer it. Maybe it was what he was used to – easier.

Loki never blinked. He only continued to look at Steve, gazing down at him, calmly.

“I want to make certain you understand. What exactly it is that you’re doing. What it is, fully, you’re running the risk of, when I ask you – do you trust me?”

This time Steve knew better than to answer right away, if only because he was sure if he did Loki would keep on asking.

Did he trust Loki? He had more than enough reasons, and experience, that he shouldn’t. What did he even know about the guy anyway?

He was Thor’s brother. He was a sorcerer. He had hurt people and was too proud to say that he was sorry. He seemed to know what to do with enemies better than he did friends.

He was willing to help other people when it came down to it. He made a lot of bad choices but now it looked like he was trying to walk a different path. He was both indifferent and terribly concerned with what other people thought of him.

He valued knowledge over ambition. He knew how to talk to little kids when they were scared. He could appreciate a joke.

“Yes,” Steve said, more firmly this time, completely certain. “I do trust you. But if we’re going to do this, I want you to promise me something. And I mean give me your word.”

“Oh?” Loki eyed him, snide but peaceable, like he had expected as much. “And what is it that you want me to promise?”

Steve grinned.

“If this works, and we both make it out okay, we’re taking a trip to that place in Brooklyn I told you about so you can finally try a decent slice of pizza.”

Loki blinked, taken aback.

“I…alright.” It took him a few more seconds to regain his composure, to manage a funny sort of smile. “Your terms are acceptable.”

“Great,” Steve said. “Now let’s get this show on the road.”

Loki nodded in agreement, his smile looking slightly more genuine.

Magic seemed to look different just about every time Steve saw it. He supposed it would have to, if it was for doing different things. Sometimes it really did almost seem scientific, like something that could be explained in the terms of the reality he already knew. Other times it was more chaotic with energy thrown around, seeming like a natural disaster.

The spell Loki was doing now looked the most like the wizardry of Steve’s childhood imagination. There were gestures and chanting in a language he couldn’t recognize, flickering candles and spooky flashes of light.

Steve closed his eyes. His head was starting to spin. Loki had warned him about this part.

There was a pulling sensation at his body, like he was being dragged off even though he wasn’t moving anywhere. He tried to keep his mind clear.

There was a perceptible shift in the world around him.

The next thing he knew, the sounds and sensations of that dark little room had faded away. He was standing on his feet somewhere. He could feel the layer of his costume against his skin, the cowl over his head, the weight of his shield on his arm. Steve opened his eyes.

A vast and strange, empty terrain stretched out before him. It looked like a dried-out desert. Overhead the sky was a faded yellow color, devoid of any clouds.

He could tell this was a dream-world, and not just by how it looked. Everything seemed…off. He could feel his arms and legs but not with the right amount of sensation. What he took in with his eyes and ears was weaker, detached. It felt realer than a dream but not quite as real as reality.

He wondered what pain would feel like here, though.

Not the time to think about that. Turning his head he looked around him. It was bright but he didn’t feel the need to shade his eyes. Straight ahead of him was what looked like a forest, covering rolling hills and surrounded by scrub. It seemed as good a place as any to start.

There wasn’t a single sound but that of his boots as he walked forward.

Which made it all the more obvious when from beneath him came a sharp, slow cracking sound.

Automatically he leapt back. Looking down he realized what he thought was simple dirt was much stranger than that. Beneath it there was some kind of unnatural looking honeycomb structure, large octagonal gaps filled in with thick frosted glass. Or maybe not all that thick, since it had started to break when he put his weight on it.

He had to look around carefully but was able to pick out where the gaps were. He continued walking. Some of them he maneuvered his path around, others he had no choice but to gingerly walk over – or bolt across, when they started to give that warning creak.

It took longer to reach the edge of the forest than it had looked like it would from the other side. But eventually he made it.

He couldn’t tell how far the forest stretched on for. The trees were tall, thinner around than Steve’s arm, but covered in dense foliage at the top in a variety of blue and purple hues. The ground seemed to roll without moving, leading to twisting natural paths.

Walking in there should be easy enough. After what happened in the desert though, he was on his guard. Sliding his shield across his shoulder onto his back he began cutting a path through.

It was still unnaturally quiet, motionless, no sounds save for when he breathed. His hands brushed silently across the trees’ trunks. The ground absorbed his steps like sponge.

“Greggy!” he decided to try calling out. “Greggy, can you hear me? It’s me, Captain America!”

He yelled out at the expanse at the top of his lungs but got no reply.

Loki hadn’t really told him what to expect once he was in here. He’d spoken like it’d be easy to figure out. Steve supposed he had thought the spirit or whatever it was would’ve appeared in front of him right away. He didn’t think he’d have to go searching for it like the world’s most clueless knight in shining armor.

Well, nothing to do but keep moving forward. Maybe whatever was on the other side of the forest would offer him more answers than this.

As soon as he broke free of the forest’s cover and walked the first couple yards onto the flattest meadow he’d ever seen, warning bells of panic went off in Steve’s head, his instincts picking up on something.

What did they say: be careful what you wish for?

There was a sound from before him, a low deep grumble, like a growl and a snarl mixed together, and coming from something really big.

Slowly, very gradually, he lifted his head. He looked up…and up…and up.

Steve sucked in a breath.

It was massive. Covered in dark fur with a heavy body and four limbs. Outside of that, it was strangely hard to describe.

Maybe he just couldn’t wrap his head around what he looked at. It seemed like a mix between the picture Loki had shown him, a giant grizzly bear and…he wasn’t sure what else. What he’d thought the monster living inside his closet was supposed to look like when he was a kid, maybe.

All he knew for certain was it had the biggest mouth he had ever seen, going from one side of its squat no-necked face to the other, filled with long sharp jutting teeth. Above the mouth was a pair of huge, black dead eyes, filled with hunger and evil.

And they were staring directly at him.

Steve took a reflexive step back, and quickly moved to grab his shield.

The monster breathed in a growl and then it gave an ear-splitting roar. It sank down onto four legs with a thud and galloped towards him.

He had a split second to decide: throw the shield, and risk being defenseless if it missed the mark, or hang onto it to defend himself?

He went with the second option just in time. As it reached him the thing pulled one front limb back and swiped at him with claws the size of his forearm.

He braced his legs and ducked his head, lifting the shield up to cover him. The blow ricocheted off with a metallic slicing sound and a bang. The monster roared again, angry.

Taking advantage of the opening he pushed forward and used his shield to bash it in the nose.

It stumbled back with a bellow of pain. While it was distracted Steve turned and with a glance back he bolted.

He wanted to stand his ground but it was far too close for comfort. Better to try wearing it down with a chase, lead it somewhere else and see if he couldn’t formulate a different strategy.

So he ran. Fast as he could, back through the forest, back towards the desert, with a creature bigger than a tank and fueled entirely by terror in hot pursuit of him the entire way. It never lost track of him. Even when he was too far ahead to see it he could hear its heavy tread, hear it growl and breathe.

And then he made the mistake of heading into the swamp, where he sank into the mud.

Where he ended up stuck all the way to his arms, unable to move with the monster right behind him and getting ever closer, while Steve called in futility at Loki for help.

He was going to be eaten alive and Loki wasn’t even pretending not to laugh at him.

 _“What’s the matter, Captain? I thought you_ trusted _me,”_ that disembodied voice sneered.

Steve shut his eyes and let his face rest on the side of his cheek in the mud. He was too furious and frustrated in this moment to even feel afraid.

Yeah, he thought. Yeah; he _had_ trusted Loki. He had thought he could actually believe in him and rely on him. And look where that had gotten him, pinned, helpless, with a giant man-eater close behind him…

And Loki was far too clever to leave him there like that.

Unless there was something he was trying to tell him.

Steve wasn’t sure if he was having an epiphany or just grasping at straws. Either way he sucked in air, filling his lungs, and stopped fighting to free himself from the pit. He let himself sink down into the mud.

He was covered past his nose and unable to look up when he heard a creaking shudder and a crash as the creature leapt through the air right where he had been, landing on the other side.

 _Great,_ Steve thought, _now what?_

Thrilled as he was to escape another close one he couldn’t hold his breath forever and he was even more stuck now than he’d been before.

From what sounding like far away there was a strange sound, like a howling of wind. Steve tried to lift his neck but it was hopeless.

Then there was a crack, the sizzle of fire, and a different howl – one that he recognized as coming from the monster’s mouth.

Its enraged, pained sounds still hadn’t stopped when something was lowered into the pit next to Steve and he found himself looking at one ornate end of a metal staff right in front of his face.

He swallowed some mud in the process but managed to free one arm to grab onto it. With relative ease he found himself hoisted up. His shoulder made some complaint but he didn’t dare let go. Once he was free and on the surface he dropped to his hands and knees, coughing.

A pair of familiar boots came into his field of vision. Steve looked up to find Loki standing over him in full armor. The dingy light glinted off the horns of his helmet.

“I told you that I would be able to assist you were it needed,” Loki remarked, mildly. “What – didn’t you believe it?”

Steve couldn’t resist glaring at him. “You could’ve just _told_ me to duck, instead of having to be a wise guy about it.”

“I had faith that you would be clever enough to figure it out on your own.” Loki smirked. “Thank you for not disappointing me.”

Steve had this weird feeling like if Thor were there, he’d be laughing right about now.

He didn’t have an Asgardian’s sense of humor though. He only shook his head and started climbing to his feet.

“Need a hand?” Loki offered, but Steve brushed him off.

“No, no. I’m good.” Glancing around he retrieved his shield from where it lay and reached to adjust his cowl. He turned to look at their foe – one front limb was blackened from where Loki had set its fur on fire and it was favoring that one slightly.

But it rotated to face them. And now it just looked really mad.

Frothing spit dripped from between the teeth in its bared maw. Its whole huge body seemed to vibrate with its snarl. It was preparing itself for a charge.

Steve shifted his stance, getting ready to move as he brought his shield up. Loki twirled his staff around once before adopting a more battle-ready pose, gripping it in both hands. They stood side by side, backing each other up, shoulders practically touching.

“I’ll hit him low,” Steve nodded, offering. “You hit him high.”

Loki agreed, “Sounds like as good a plan as any.”

Without moving from their positions their eyes met, and on a wordless agreement they both launched themselves at the monster at once.

And this time, there wasn’t any room left for doubt.

*

It was the next night and Tony was standing by the front gate outside of the base, smirking proudly to himself as his driver drove up to him in his newest car, the one he’d been bragging about all week.

As the driver got out, Tony reached out a hand, gesturing he should toss the keys over.

The CEO’s smile disappeared in confusion and dismay as just when they were about to reach him, a hand suddenly shot out from beside him and snatched the keys out of midair.

Tony swiveled to find Loki standing next to him, wearing normal ‘mortal’ clothes and a smug look of his own.

“Uh, _hey_ ,” Tony objected, angry and off-put. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”

He fell silent as a second person entered his field of vision: Steve, who grinned at him.

“You said I could borrow your car.”

Tony blinked several times before he registered that. “I was _kidding!_ I didn’t think for one second you would ever actually take me up on that offer-”

“Uh huh. Well, too late.” Steve dismissively looked away from him and gave Loki a slight frown. “You’re not driving, though.”

Loki raised his eyebrows. Steve held out his palm, giving a severe look.

“Come on. In case we get pulled over, I’m thinking whoever’s behind the wheel should have an actual valid driver’s license.”

Loki relented and dropped the keys into his hand with a long-suffering sigh. He stalked off in the direction of the passenger’s seat door.

Steve looked back over at Tony, who was still visibly bewildered.

“Thanks.” Steve gestured with the keys, happily. “I promise I’ll fill it up again before we bring it back.”

“What…you guys are going on a _road trip?_ ” Tony managed, his voice thick with disbelief.

“Yep. Next stop, New York.” Steve walked off, waving at him. “See you in a couple of days! And thanks again!”

Tony was still standing there gaping when they drove off. Through the open windows (of his _brand new car_ ) he could hear the faint strains of “Born This Way” blaring from the speakers, and Loki’s laughter.

His bemusement didn’t end when later on that evening he went into the Avengers’ kitchen.

Pinned to the center of the fridge with a couple of magnets was a crayon drawing by a small child, signed in the corner with the name of Gregory Mitchell. It was titled ‘My Heroes’ and was a picture of two figures.

One of them, decked out in red white and blue stars, was Captain America. And the other one, in green and gold with horns and all, was Loki.


End file.
